Gordon McKechnie

It should have become obvious over the past few days that there is no solution to the current Irish Border debate unless one side or the other backs down. The two possibilities before us - a hard border versus the same arrangements as today - are dependant on what sort of a trade deal the UK negotiates with the EU. The Irish Border question, which should be a result of the trade negotiations, has however become a precondition to them. If, perchance, we end up, over the objections of the DUP, with a special deal for Northern Ireland , then Scotland and Wales would be quite right to demand something similar - moving the hard border off the island of Ireland and onto the island of Britain . But then wouldn't England want a special deal too, given the problems an English hard Brexit ("Engxit"?) would cause/is already causing to the English economy, and particularly to the less-well-off members of the population? This route, if followed, would likely end up at ...

In its September 2017 issue, "Hungarian Review" published my essay on the Tokaj wine region under the title "TARCAL AND THE WINE OF KINGS - TRAVELLING IN THE TOKAJ REGION". Here it is.  At the hilltop, above the terraces of vines, the Terézia Chapel's bright white walls and new copper roof shine like a bright beacon against the deep blue of the autumn sky. The leaves on the vines are turning golden with the season. With the sun on our backs the October afternoon is pleasantly warm. The Terézia vineyard, one of the best and most historic in the Tokaj region, is named after the chapel; and the chapel in turn is named for St Theresa, namesake of the Empress Maria-Theresa. Maria-Theresa, the only ever female Habsburg ruler, lived from 1717 to 1780 and reigned from 1740 to 1780. Among her many titles she was Queen of Hungary, crowned in Bratislava (Pozsony, Pressburg) on 25 June 1741. In the precarious early years of her reign, when the questioning of her ...

The Votes are the smallest ethnic minority in Europe. They speak a Finnic language and live in two villages in Russia to the west of St Petersburg. Two years ago, in August 2015, I went to visit them. This is my account of the trip. The article has been published by East-West Review (as part of  From St Petersburg to Pskov by way of Luzhitsy ) in its Spring/Summer 2018 issue (Vol 17, no 1; ISSUE 47) and by Hungarian Review in its May 2018 issue (Volume IX, No. 3). Peter the Great Between St Isaac's Cathedral and the Neva, stands St Petersburg 's most famous statue - "The Bronze Horseman". It is a statue of Peter the Great on his horse trampling on a snake (representing Sweden , I'm told). The horse rears up onto its hind legs and Peter's right arm stretches out over the city. The horse and rider stand atop a massive irregularly cut block of granite that alone weighs 1625 tonnes. On this pedestal you read that the monument is a tribute to Peter...