www.bradtguides.com Each year the BGTW presents awards for articles and books written by members. These are judged by an independent and anonymous panel of experts.
The winners were announced at the BGTW’s annual gala dinner held at the Savoy Hotel in London on the eve of World Travel Market.
This year Adrian Phillips, Bradt’s Commissioning Editor won the Best Guidebook Award for Hungary (published in 2005), thus maintaining Bradt Travel Guides’ recent unbroken run of wins in the guidebook category.
The award coincides with the 50-year anniversary of the brutal crushing of Hungary’s 1956 Revolution and years of subservience to the Soviets. More recently burning cars and stone-throwing demonstrators were on the streets of Budapest following Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany’s expletive-laden speech to party members in which he confessed to having continually lied about the state of the economy in the run up to the election.
The former communist was heard to say 'We screwed up. Not a little, a lot...' - to date Gyurcsany remains in office. Adrian and co-author Jo Scotchmer spent six months travelling Hungary’s highways and byways in preparation for the book. Adrian characterise Hungarians as ‘a rare and intriguing breed of proud pessimists… more Eeyore than Tigger’ and after braving vestigial Cold War waiters, inadvertent repasts of cockerel’s testicles, kamikaze taxi drivers and severe cases of ‘Rubik’s Wrist’ he’s in a good position to judge!
Adrian Phillips is a PhD in English Literature and commissioning editor at Bradt Travel Guides. He first visited Hungary in the 1990s, writes regularly on the country for magazines and newspapers, and is also co-author of Bradt guides to Budapest and Singapore.
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