Hungary’s most important day

The 23 October is Hungary’s most important annual public holiday, as it marks the outbreak of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. It is called Nemzeti ünnep, or National Day. Each year when the date comes around, I quietly salute it. The revolution, after all, was the world event that determined the course of my life. Its crushing by the Soviet Union was the reason my family fled Hungary and why I became, in time, a British citizen and British writer. The date date is full of meaning for me, but this year its significance is greater than usual.

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I’ve recently returned from Hungary, where my children’s novel – set in Budapest during the revolution – was published last month. As there has been little in the way of children’s literature on the theme of 1956, it received considerable attention.