Martyn C. Rady

Martyn Rady is the author of 'The Habsburgs: Rise and Fall of a World Power' (also published as 'The Habsburgs: To Rule the World') and of 'The Middle Kingdoms: A New History of Central Europe', which was published in May 2023. His book on the Habsburgs is published in UK and US editions and has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, German, Serbian, Russian, Dutch, and Chinese. He has also written extensively on Hungarian and Romanian history and has translated several of the principal Czech and Hungarian chronicles and law codes. Back in the 1980s, Martyn was a schoolteacher, working at Mill Hill School in North London. It was then that he wrote his first books, on the government of medieval Buda and on the Emperor Charles V. In 1990, he joined the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of the University of London, which was later swallowed up into University College London. For much of his academic career, Martyn was also the Warden of Hughes Parry Hall in Bloomsbury. He retired in 2020, to concentrate on writing. During lockdown, he found that he had not much else to do and 'The Middle Kingdoms' is the product of that time. Contrary to popular opinion, Martyn is not a Hungarian. There is a minor Hungarian noble family called Rády, but it has nothing to do with him! He lives in Stroud in Gloucestershire.