October 2, 2013

Autobiography of The Churchill Centre’s Patron Lady Soames Finds Eager Audience in Hungary

The memoirs of Winston Churchill’s youngest daughter, Mary Soames, have been published in Hungarian thanks to the enthusiastic efforts of translator Veronika Bánki. After translating The Churchills by Celia and John Lee in 2011, Bánki received as a gift from the authors a copy of Lady Soames’s newly-published memoir A Daughter’s Tale. “From the first moment,” Bánki recounted, it “was clear that I was going to translate the book–with or without a formal commission.”  She began work in the summer of 2012 with the intention of making the finished product an “homage marking the 90th birthday of the author.”

“My work was very pleasant,” Bánki continued.  “I was helped by Celia Lee and by Lady Soames’s private secretary Nonie Chapman.  The publisher [Holnap] secured the collaboration of an eminent professor of English history, Gergely Egedy.”  Finally, “the most famous living poet of Hungary, László Lator, helped us find an appropriate title (we wanted to conserve the aura of the word ‘tale’ as used in English literature.)  The title [A Churchill lány története] is perfect in Hungarian!”

“The name Churchill is a magnet for Hungarian readers,” Bánki explained. “Lately there is a renewed interest in the history of the Second World War. That was not only a tragic period for our country too, but determined sadly the history of Hungary for decades.  I think Lady Soames’s description of the war, from the point of view of a young girl and from that of the daughter of Winston Churchill will deepen the knowledge of the Hungarian reader even though the book does not touch directly on Hungary itself.”

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Veronika Bánki’s remarks reprinted by kind permission of allaboutshipping.co.uk.