Monica Porter is a journalist and author. Her latest book is A History of Europe in 12 Cafes.
You could say my unfortunate track record with pets began in the cradle. At the time of my birth my Hungarian parents had a dachshund named Herr Doktor (because of the serious expression he always wore), or Doki for short. He was very put out by my arrival, as I received much of the attention
As a kid growing up in the Bronx and afterwards in the suburbs to the north, I loved New York. To me it was like the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz – vast, glittering and full of promise. It was where my family settled after escaping the nightmare of communist dictatorship, in the
Our Serbian guide Zoran is a jovial fellow and as we rumble through the streets of Belgrade in our minibus he regales us with a joke about the difference between the various nationalities of the former Yugoslavia, all now with countries of their own. ‘We Serbs are rude,’ he says, ‘but the Croatians are self-centred,
A recent study by the Centre for London thinktank claims that the city’s black cabs could disappear forever, unless something is done to reverse the decline. Thanks to Uber, the ubiquitous satnav which devalues the cabbies’ hard-earned Knowledge of London’s streets, and the Mayor’s anti-motorist measures, there are ever fewer black cabs rumbling around the
The termination of US government funding for the two venerable radio stations Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty (RL) by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) shows how blindly fanatical the Tesla owner’s axe-wielding has become. Musk claims RFE/RL is run by ‘radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1 billion
The Department for Transport has just launched an eight-week consultation to determine the shape of its much-vaunted Great British Railways – our renationalised railway system. Will it, I wonder, be anything like the earlier nationalised incarnation, British Rail (BR)? I do hope so. Because, although BR was disparaged for being old-fashioned and a bit creaky,
There are two types of people: the hoarders and those who are always chucking things out because they hate clutter. I fall into the latter category. In my view, a well-ordered environment makes for a well-ordered mind. So you’ll not see my desk buried beneath the usual office detritus, nor my car strewn with apple
President Jimmy Carter, who died earlier this week, has been praised for his humanitarian instincts. Not for nothing did he receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, long after his presidency, for his continuing work in promoting human rights around the world. But as a Hungarian-born writer, my warm feelings towards him will always be
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
I grew up in the America of the 1960s, an era renowned for its kaftan-wearing hippies, its ethos of free love and hallucinogens, and demos against the Vietnam War. This was something that caught the imagination of my two London-born, English sons, once they were old enough to have acquired some knowledge of recent social
Housing Secretary Angela Rayner is said to be planning on watering down the right-to-buy scheme which enables council tenants to purchase their homes from local authorities at a significantly reduced price. The policy, famously introduced by Margaret Thatcher in 1980, has helped many thousands of families become home-owners, giving them greater security and a stake
Many years ago I wrote a book called Dreams and Doorways, a collection of interviews with well-known people – writers, actors, politicians, sports personalities – about their childhood. I wanted to find out how their early experiences helped to turn them into the high-achieving adults they later became. And in almost every case, some kind
It’s a painful process many of us must go through: culling a big book collection, amassed over a lifetime, before moving home. You know it makes sense, as you’ve struggled to house all your books – thousands of them – and they include quite a few you frankly wouldn’t miss. This chore awaits me at
If the Donald Trump-JD Vance ticket is successful in November and the pair head to the White House, there is a former US president who would surely turn in his grave: Ronald Reagan. While Reagan saw the importance of American involvement in Europe, Trump and his running mate Vance seem in favour of adopting a
I fell in love with London when I arrived here as a teenager at the start of the 1970s. Straight out of an American suburban high school, I’d dreamed of the great metropolis of Shakespeare and Dickens, and I vowed never to leave. Why would I, when, as Dr Samuel Johnson famously declared, ‘He who
Hungary has just begun its presidency of the Council of the EU, as part of the member states’ six-monthly rotation process. Unsurprisingly, prime minister Viktor Orbán is all keyed up for the challenge. For years the bureaucrats of Brussels have tried to force the stubbornly contrary PM to change his ways, withholding billions of euros
You can’t miss the vast banner emblazoned on the high-rise building overlooking central Vilnius. It reads: PUTIN, THE HAGUE IS WAITING FOR YOU. Not one to mince their words, the Lithuanians. And neither are the Latvians or Estonians. In the face of an increasingly menacing Kremlin, the Baltic states – on Nato’s front line against
The famous Flyfishers’ Club, Britain’s oldest fly-fishing club, is the latest male bastion to have the fair sex banging at the door. Women feel they have been unjustly excluded throughout its 193-year history, and now they want in. Seeing as the Garrick has at last buckled to the demand to admit women, they say the
I recently had the pleasure of spending some time with my two teenage grandsons, who live in Dorset – 16-year-old Dylan and Isaac, who is 14. Listening to them chatting with their friends, I slowly realised that, half the time, I hadn’t a clue what they were on about. Peculiar words I’d never heard before
I was in my early twenties when I found out that I’m half-Jewish. Until then, as far as I was aware, I was merely a lapsed Catholic embracing the secular life. (I abandoned the faith at the age of ten; my Catholic mother didn’t seem to mind.) My father, as I understood it, was Protestant.
