Laszlo Solymar

Culture is an amorphous concept. On holidays abroad, it can shrink to what is different from home apart from not be...

When Mrs Thatcher exiled me to Geneva in 1979, the Swiss office that registers foreigners called “Contrôle de l’habit...

Simpson’s-in-the-Strand is due to reopen this autumn after being closed for five years, ever since the Covid pandemic...

Why was Vitus Bering so important? He was a Danish cartographer who later became a naturalised Russian naval officer and explorer. In the early 18th century, during two expeditions financed by Tsar Peter the Great, Bering discovered the Strait — the 53-mile sea lane between Alaska and Siberia — which is named after him. The Bering Strait was recently in the news again because of the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska.

In the good old days of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy the best places for political banter were the coffee houses. I shall quote a piece of gossip that did the rounds in both capitals well before my time, but it still amuses me when I think of it: “We all know that Russia is ripe for a revolution, but they lack the people to ignite it. Who would make their revolution, little Mr Bronstein from the Café Central?” (Bronstein was the real name of Trotsky,

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Some politicians stick to the same principles in all their life. Indeed, crossing the floor is a rather rare event in the British Parliament. Others drift with the tide. The best example is probably Pierre Laval, who was the architect of the Franco-Soviet Mutual Assistance Pact in 1940. A few years later he set up La Milice, under the aegis of the Vichy government, perhaps the most murderous Right-wing police organisation Western Europe ever saw. Plus, of course, there are the swingers who like to have more than one partner. The same thing might happen in politics under special circumstances.

I recently celebrated my 96th birthday. At the family gathering, the conversation turned to some of my earliest memories. I found myself describing the first gift I can remember receiving as a child some 90 years ago: a beautiful edition of Egri Csillagók, Géza Gárdonyi's great novel of Hungarian heroism, known in English as

The recent parliamentary elections in Hungary came as a bolt from the blue. Viktor Orbán had enjoyed a brilliant care...

Every country has a different political structure. Another version of this saying states: “Every country has the poli...