The Will to Survive, written by Bryan Cartledge, historian, diplomat and Oxford academic, is the first comprehensive history of Hungary to be published in English by a non-Hungarian since C.A. Macartney's Hungary: A Short History (Edinburgh, 1962). It is also the first history of Hungary to be written by an author who had been British Ambassador to that country, had witnessed the events which he records in the book's closing chapters, and had known many of the Hungarians who took part in them. Sir Bryan Cartledge first came to Hungary in the 1970s and served as British ambassador to Hungary in 1980-83. He holds diplomas in the Hungarian language from the University of Westminster (UK) and University of Debrecen (Hungary), and is thoroughly familiar with great works of Hungarian literature, having read most in the original.
The book combines narrative with analysis and comment and covers the political, economic, social and cultural history of Hungary from the westward migration of the Magyar tribes and their occupation of the Carpathian Basin to the entry of a democratic Hungarian state into the NATO Alliance and the European Union. No previous history written from the perspective of a non-Hungarian has attempted such a comprehensive approach, which balances accounts of the tragedies which have befallen this small nation with appreciation of its cultural achievements. The Will to Survive should become the standard history of Hungary in English, to be read both for general interest and for reference.
Described as "the best history of Hungary in the English language" by the eminent Hungarian-American historian John Lukacs, The Will to Survive is deeply researched and beautifully written. It traces Hungarian history through centuries of medieval greatness, Turkish occupation, Hapsburg domination and unsuccessful struggles for independence. It describes the massive loss of territory and population after the First World War, the fatal alliance with Nazi Germany motivated by the hope of compensation for the Treaty of Trianon, and forty years of Soviet-imposed Communism after the Second World War interrupted by a heroic but brutally suppressed revolution in 1956.
The book was first published in 2006 on the 50th anniversary of the Revolution of 1956, reprinted several times both in hardcover and paperback, and first published in Hungarian in 2008.