In an account which ranges over the history and substance of the term Central Europe, the director of a foreign policy think-tank and a former ambassador to Brussels, NATO and the EU, argues that regional, rather than national, history is a more productive approach, allowing the beginnings and the processes of the past to be seen in an integrated perspective. Two recent theories that aroused much interest, Kundera's and Wallerstein's (one postulating cultural similarities the second a deterministic model which appealed to Marxists) are given a regional and settlement context. Civil society and the process of embourgeoisment have national and regional specifics, as does a deficit in national consciousness.

King Saint Stephen was crowned on January 1st, 1000 and thus Hungary celebrates a thousand years of Christianity and statehood this year. Three articles here deal with the first king and the crown associated with him.

This is an abbreviated extract from a chapter in the author's forthcoming book on Central European dynastic cults, to be published by Cambridge University Press. He links the canonisation of rulers to the defining of royal functions and the sacrality of rulership, although the Holy See was still to reserve canonisation to itself only in a later century. The first Hungarian saints were canonised in 1083; Professor Klaniczay examines the political motivation of the canonisation of members of the House of Árpád and the cults developed around them, especially Stephen. Fostering the cult of a ruler/saint involved both cultural transmission and prestige. The author points out that the Saint Stephen legends bring something new to the genre of the legends of holy rulers, of potential benefit to both rulers and the Church. The legends reflect the intellectual climate of the Europe of the time. Finally the legends of Saint Stephen are placed in a hagiographic context.

Seized, stolen, buried, taken or smuggled abroad and even pledged, the Holy Crown of Hungary has indeed had an adventurous history. By the thirteenth century it had become the very symbol of royal legitimacy and, after various tribulations, fell into the hands of the Habsburgs, leading to its being hidden in 1849 after the collapse of the War of Independence. At the end of the Second World War, it was taken to the United States, where it remained until 1978.

Helene Kottaner was in the entourage of Elisabeth, widow of Albrecht of Habsburg, King of Hungary. Upon his death in 1439, Elisabeth wished to secure the succession for her (as yet unborn) son and entrusted Helene Kottaner with the theft of the crown. Mistress Kottaner dictated this account to a scrivener and we print an extract from the MS, now held in Vienna.

Dumb to the Deaf
By László Krasznahorkai

A recent short story by a novelist with a growing international reputation, the author of The Melancholy of Resistance.

After a long illness, György Petri, one of Hungary's leading contemporary poets, died as this edition was going to press.
A Smile
What a Shame

Ten years after Hungary's "negotiated revolution", many Hungarians display frustration towards the political democracy and market economy they now live in. Professor Csepeli links this to socio-psychological causes stemming from their experience of the past, such as paternalism, learned helplessness, passivity, dependence on the state and negative identity.

The author of this lavishly illustrated essay, a New York based writer and architect, is concerned with a Budapest quarter whose heterogeneity is its defining feature. The medieval street grid has remained and what stands and has stood on it mirrors the history of the city and the country. The structure of the quarter today appears to be haphazard. Yet it is a world literally shaped step by step, a world that was once a centre.

A journalist who covered everything from politics to fine arts and horse racing, Elek Magyar's weekly gourmet columns were collected in 1932 (The Gourmet Cookbook, Corvina 1970) into a book that was for many years the authoritative account of Hungarian cuisine. Like Curnonsky in France, however, he did much more than collect recipes. The extracts here include his treatment of baked ham, Saint Anne's Day in Somogy County and the delights of Autumn. (The book is reviewed elsewhere in this issue by the master chef Károly Unger.)

An unusually rich set of reviews in this issue, in addition to the regular reports on theatre and cinema by Tamás Koltai and Erzsébet Bori respectively, covers the poetry of Attila József and Illyés, new work on the 1956 Revolution, and a biography of the film director Miklós Jancsó. We highlight some below.

"There is, if you like, an Attila József shaped hole in the world waiting to be filled: normally sceptical readers come to the poems in translation expecting to discover a great poet," comments the Anglo-Hungarian poet and translator in this essay review of three new selections of József's poetry in English. He takes the opportunity to survey some other versions in English of the work of one of the twentieth century's great poets.

Nicholas Parsons here reviews two new histories of Hungary and finds them "both excellent in their own way", with virtues that are complementary and sees them as further evidence that "Hungarian history writing is enjoying a boom" and has shaken off four decades of ideological constraints and distortions.

Secretary General to the Hungarian Liszt Society, Klára Hamburger is preparing a (first) critical edition of the correspondence between Liszt and his mother. At the age of thirty-nine, recently widowed and speaking no French, she moved to Paris at her son's instigation and became Madame Liszt. The letters display a devoted son, not averse to teasing his mother. This is essentially a correspondence concerned with family affairs, whether money to buy ice-cream or maternal disapproval over a son taking Minor Orders.