Archd. EDUARD HABSBURG — "Hungary in Christendom: an Audience with History"

To call our guest in May, at the British-Hungarian Society, a superstar of diplomacy: is to deploy a term quite alien to a trade craft usually gauged, by virtue of innate shrewdness and gentility.

More than mere urbane raconteur, or demonstrable online-diplomatic celebrity, however, EDUARD von HABSBURG-LORRAINE has a record of performance, as Hungary’s incumbent ambassador to the Holy See, which few of his Vatican colleagues could hope to match; least of all during such turbulent times.

History’s arguably most Left-wing pontiff, simply put, seems smitten with visiting Europe’s most Right-wing nation! For a country like Hungary to receive two visits from Pope Francis, in almost as many years, is nothing short of astonishing. How the Archuduke has managed such feats, sits ill with a society so wedded to egalitarianism, the very idea that someone might genuinely be born to a profession, causes it gratifyingly untold conniptions of cognitive dissonance. Accomplishments magnified further by the ambassador’s most recent publication, which grants an audience, with the recipe behind them: each elemental ‘Rule’ of which, with an almost avuncular charm, unlocks a vexatious riddle of contemporary postmodernism.

Despite His Excellency’s loyal service to a Calvinist prime minister, few paying close attention to the insurgent populist revival, internationally, could fail to have noticed that traditional, devout adherents of the Roman church appear to have earned themselves such prominence, within it. If Catholicism is the fleshy heart, therefore, at the centre of “The Habsburg Way,” the union of marriage and family – as Viktor Orbán intimates, in the book’s foreword – may be called its resounding heartbeat; the PM has five children, to the ambassador's six.

Action and duty however, are never far-off either, from the riveting tale of passing centuries which the Archduke recounts. Readers being thus afforded a glimpse, of an iron determination, to in all things be driven by principle (hidden usually, by the good-humoured reserve which has made the ambassador so popular with international media); a lesson, which perhaps, every member of his illustrious family must come to terms with. Each being a living lens onto a millennium of European history.

In turn, while also offering to personalize copies of his latest volume – for the benefit of our esteemed audience – His Excellency has also promised to speak at length about the HUNGARY HELPS program; whose dedication to aiding persecuted Christians worldwide, is never far from the ambassador's thoughts.

Guests will not merely be guaranteed a fascinating evening, but may even leave the Embassy of Hungary sincerely asking themselves, which country genuinely deserves to be called Europe’s, “humanitarian superpower.”