Issue 125

Emma Hopkins, OBE, has been HM ambassador to Bulgaria for two years, following a successful career in areas as varied as migration and asylum, human rights and preventing sexual violence in war zones. She has two small daughters who go to school outside of Sofia, but who have to breathe the Central Sofia air when they come home. Two years is probably not a very long time to make an in-depth assessment of any country, but Emma Hopkins has some very clear ideas of what's going on in ever-changing Bulgaria.

Advertising is one of those businesses, which has changed so rapidly and dramatically in the past few years that if you have lived long enough to remember the olden days, you might think of the early 2000s as if they belonged to the pre-Diluvian age. Contemporary advertising is fast, digital, ever changing and constantly fine-tuning to reach its target groups more efficiently, helping old and young, big and small companies to prosper and succeed. Or to fail, if they underestimate how modern advertising works.

It is an image that stays in the mind. In a brightly-lit, austere tavern, a pair of men in traditional Bulgarian costume dance, surrounded by onlookers. Rachenitsa is a horo popular all over Bulgaria and is usually danced by one or two men, not holding hands, but on their own. Famous for its difficulty and the stamina required, in the olden times it was used as a competition between rival parties.

To G. N.