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Martyn Rady is the author of 'The Habsburgs: Rise and Fall of a World Power' (2020, and also published as 'The Habsburgs: To Rule the World') and of 'The Middle Kingdoms: A New History of Central Europe', which came out in May 2023. His books have been published in UK and US editions and translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, German, Croatian, Serbian, Romanian, Russian, Dutch, Ukrainian, 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 (UCL). For much of his academic career, Martyn was also the Warden of Hughes Parry Hall in Bloomsbury. He retired from UCL in 2020, to concentrate on writing. During lockdown, he found that he had not much else to do and 'The Middle Kingdoms' was the product of that time.
Since 2023, Martyn has been working on a new book which complements 'The Middle Kingdoms' by looking at the Balkans and the swathe of territory reaching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, much of which is now Ukraine. The book, provisionally entitled 'The Wild East: Empires and Borderlands on Europe's Edge', is now finished and with his editors. It will probably be published in late 2026 or, to avoid being swamped in the Christmas rush of new books, in early 2027. Next up will be 'Europe: A History across Continents' which looks at European history but without sealing it off from the rest of the world. The chapter plan is done, contracts signed, and it will hopefully be out by 2030, by which time he will be seventy-five.
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. His father was the celebrated preacher and United Reformed minister, Howard Rady, who died in 2024, aged ninety-eight.
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