Hungarian Evening - Lewes Hungarian Society

Hungary has successfully maintained its unique language and remarkable cultural identity, despite the tides of war and political change that have swirled around it over the centuries. The Lewes Hungarian Society, formed last year, is having a Spring Evening of Entertainment this Friday to celebrate all things Hungarian. Academic Peter Sherwood will be giving a talk about ordinary Hungarian men who came to Britain during the Elizabethan period. He has uncovered, he tells me, records of begging permits issued by the Privy Council to these men, who were travelling in search of money to pay ransom demands made by the occupying Ottoman Turks, who had kidnapped their families. Unable to speak English, they communicated as best they could using dog Latin and pictorial boards.
Publisher and writer Francis Bennett will also be giving a talk, about the second of his Cold War thriller trilogy, which is set in Hungary. "It was partly inspired by an erotic moment in my past when I witnessed a beautiful woman pulling off her bathing cap by a Hungarian hotel pool," he tells me. "But also by the anger I felt during the 1956 Revolution when the British Government, caught up with the Suez crisis, ignored the terrible events unfolding in Hungary."
The evening promises to be lively, with Tokai, goulash and performances by the Hungarian Folk Dance Group of London. Apparently the women dance with full, uncorked wine bottles balanced on their heads, and men wear leather boots and do much slapping of thighs. EC