Born and educated in the UK, the lateLucy Mallows worked for 12 years in Budapest as a reporter. She first visited Transylvania in 1997, but her links with Romania go back to the late 1980s when she worked as a volunteer for Operation Romanian Villages, and to an early childhood fairytale The Lost Princess, written in 1924 by Queen Marie of Romania. As a travel writer and journalist, she contributed regularly to many international dailies and magazines, and wrote guidebooks and articles on countries from Iceland to Portugal. An expert on Central European culture, she spoke six foreign languages including Hungarian, Czech and Russian. Lucy Mallows was also the author of the Bradt guides to Bratislava and Slovakia. She died in 2018. Paul Brummell is presently British Ambassador to Latvia, having been the British Ambassador to Romania (2014-18). A career diplomat, he joined the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office in 1987. He has also served as British Ambassador to Turkmenistan and to Kazakhstan (as well as non-resident Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan) and High Commissioner to the countries of the eastern Caribbean, based in Barbados. In 2016, he was awarded the CMG for services to British foreign policy. He is the author of Bradt guides to Transylvania, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. He has also written Diplomatic Gifts: a history in fifty presen Romania has long been part of the writing heritage of Tim Burford, for that country initiated the fruitful, decades-long and ongoing partnership between the experienced travel writer and Bradt. After five years as a publisher, he wrote Bradt's Hiking Guide to Romania in 1991. As well as writing the second edition of that guide, Burford wrote much of the Rough Guide to Romania, including the Transylvania sections, until 2016. The region is dear to his heart, and he has been explored it every three to five years for more than 30 years. He has now written nine books for Bradt (and updated six others), his publications stretching from Uruguay to Uzbekistan, as well as writing Rough Guides to Romania, Alaska and Wales. Burford also leads hiking trips in Europe's mountains, takes any excuse to get on a bike and explore (whether in his hometown of Cambridge or further afield), and blogs at unraveltravel.org.
