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WE WILL STILL READ ONE ANOTHER
Some countries have decided, after the veritable fast of the pandemic, to boost the love of publishers and readers by providing publishing houses with significant incentives to present their books on well-arranged stands. Domestic publishers are awaiting visitors with a mix of hope and anxiety, but they already know that the book fair concept must change drastically if it wants to survive
The main motivation for the staging of this year’s Belgrade Book Fair is the great desire of almost all publishers to preserve one of the most important cultural events in our country - so Bora Babić, director and editor-in-chief of publishing house Akademska knjiga [Academic Book], succinctly summarises the fears and hopes of publishers who will await the public under the domes of Hall 1 of the Belgrade Fair from 23rd to 30th October, after a break over two years that fundamentally changed the way we live and the way we perceive our reality and future.
We asked Mrs Babić and other reputable publishers and editors about the place of book fairs in this new reality. How much do they need to be physical gatherings and how much should they be digitalised? Do fair halls still represent undisputed arenas to encounter books and hang around with books; and how do they see the future of encounters between books and readers? Finally, considering the decidedly dark images of the immediate future, we asked our interlocutors whether book fairs should represent a way of fleeing the not-so-pleasant present or whether they should try to bring awareness to that present. Here are their answers.
BORA BABIĆ
BETWEEN COURAGE AND FEAR
A GOOD BOOK ALWAYS ENLIGHTENS, AND WE MIGHT BE WISE TO READ THEM MORE OFTEN, EVEN AS A SELF-IMPOSED ASSIGNMENT. IT IS ONLY BY READING THE BEST LITERATURE THAT WE CAN UNDERSTAND THE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE, AND CHANGE IT – EVEN IF THAT CHANCE IS MEASURED IN MICROMETRES.
Book fairs are cautiously returning. Almost all major fairs have again reduced their total exhibition space this year compared to 2019, with significantly reduced numbers of participants – exhibitors, but the number of visitors has also decreased comparably. In the countries of Western Europe, ministries of culture are attempting to preserve book fairs by subsidising part of the costs of leasing space for exhibitors. For example, thanks to the support of German Commissioner for Culture and Media Claudia Roth, lease prices at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair will be reduced by 30% for all exhibitors, according to the size of their stand. This difference in price will be reimbursed from Germany’s Neustart Kultur programme, which was established in 2020 to strengthen the industry of books and publishing, and to support book fairs during the pandemic.
The International Belgrade Book Fair wasn’t held during the previous two years, while this year publishers bravely registered for participation, though the majority of them fear that they won’t make back the money they’ve invested. Online sales, internet marketing and major discounts from publishers throughout the year, but also the continuation of the pandemic, will impact on reducing the number of visitors, and thus reduced book sales are expected. Renowned world fairs conduct research almost every year and provide exhibitors with timely information on projected visitor numbers and their educational and age structure, forming space leasing and ticket prices on the basis of the results of that research. These data are invaluable to participants, as they form the basis for them to be able to plan their earnings, or determine how much the investment pays off. Unfortunately, the Belgrade Fair doesn’t invest in this kind of research.
Only when the Fair ends and publishers “count their takings” will it become clear what will have to change in the concept of the event itself. The Book Fair will probably have a festival character in the future; it will be obliged to offer a programme with significantly higher quality content in order to attract the highest possible numbers of attendees from our country and the region. My prediction is that publishers will be unable to finance such an event on their own in the future, but rather the state, together with the Belgrade Fair (or some other organiser), will have to find new financing models.
Throughout the history of the Book Fair, the biggest stands in Hall 1 have always belonged to publishers that are so-called market leaders, who have published the most titles during the year, and that remains so today. Fortunately, significantly smaller publishing houses also have their stands in the same hall, thanks to the quality of their publishing programme, and that is primarily a good thing because of the structure of visitors, because we mustn’t forget that the
Book Fair must also be profitable for participants. If it gains a festival character, which is my prediction, Hall 1 certainly won’t just be a ‘megastore, but will receive other mise-en-scènes. IN THIS THIRD DECADE OF THE 21ST CENTURY, DIGITALISATION AND THE INTERNET ARE REDUCING THE INTEREST OF PUBLISHERS IN INVESTING IN BRANDED WORLD FAIRS, AS THERE IS A MUCH FASTER AND CHEAPER WAY FOR INFORMATION ABOUT BOOKS TO REACH READERS OR FOREIGN PUBLISHERS, IF WE ARE TALKING ABOUT COPYRIGHT
BRANKO KUKIĆ
EDITOR OF THE OFFICIAL GAZETTE
LITERARY BAZAARS
PUBLISHING BOOKS IS A PROCESS THAT’S CONNECTED TO KNOWLEDGE, TO CREATION, TO GOALS THAT ARE IMPORTANT FOR THE FORMATION OF ANY SOCIETY. AND THAT DOESN’T HAPPEN IN CROWDS, LIKE AT FAIRS, BUT RATHER IN AGREEMENTS AND COOPERATION BETWEEN SERIOUS PEOPLE, PEOPLE WHO UNDERSTAND THE ESSENCE OF THE WORLD
Man likes to be in a crowd. Fairs are the best places to satisfy that primal desire. Book fairs are both fairs and supermarkets, the purpose of which is to turn a quick profit, but also to sell poor quality goods. As with any fair - like the one in Šabac for example - it is an opportunity for people to meet, to brag, to swindle one another, to whinge about the situation in the state and society, to gossip about other people and dissenting voices, to drink something and to kill time. It’s a nonsensical, glittering place of instantly forgettable miracles. That’s why I don’t like those places.
I’ve given book fairs a wide berth, because they don’t have any special connection with culture. Due to the things that I’ve stated, they’re usually a form of false culture or nonculture. They are a meeting place for a crowd gathered from impaling stakes and nooses. One who is seeking something serious won’t find it there – except, of course, some serious and significant THERE ARE EVER MORE EDITORS LACKING VISION books. That’s simply because publishing books is a process that’s connected to knowledge, to creation, to goals that are important for the formation of any society. And that doesn’t AND AESTHETIC DISCIPLINE. THAT’S WHY THERE ARE EVER FEWER GOOD WRITERS, BECAUSE happen in crowds, but rather in agreements and cooperation THERE ARE FEWER GREAT ROLE MODELS, AND between serious people, people who understand the essence of the world, people who speak critically about our problems, weaknesses, failures, misconceptions, flaws and foolishness. BECAUSE OF ALL THAT THERE ARE EVER FEWER SOPHISTICATED READERS OF LITERATURE
Miroslav Krleža put it nicely: “It’s stinky in a crowd, but it’s warm”. Serious creators and publishers should use their books – artistic, scientific and all other kinds – to navigate the world in the direction of the most significant thing man is able to create. That’s because books are instruments that prevent us from becoming slaves to stupidity and superficiality, though books contain most of that. If important topics are turned into “light pieces” in a nation, state and society, then the meaning of everything is lost, impotence in establishing a value system prevails, we are left unaware of who our role models are, our foundations and guides towards meaning, elegance and bravery.
A large quantity of books are published in our country today. But a question arises as to the quality of those books. The quality of published books is dependent on the level of education and creativity of editors in publishing houses. This is the number one problem and issue in publishing. There are ever more editors lacking vision and aesthetic discipline. That’s why there are ever fewer good writers, because there are fewer great role models, and because of all that there are ever fewer sophisticated readers of literature. This sequence and progression is considered ever less today, because a high-quality reader creates a new high-quality reader. That’s the only route to enduring values. Culture is the golden chain of meaning that connects us, and not the chains that restrain us. This is discussed ever less in our country and around the world today, because the book has become a consumable product and not a spirit over the waters of a transitory world. A time will come when the greatest works of literature are longer read. And man’s taste will thus be corrupted, criteria will decay, and the world will be in the hands of insignificance and banality. And then man, as a former creative being, will lose the meaning of his existence. Those will be “hollow people” who trapse around the bazaars and fairs of a foreign world.
GOJKO BOŽOVIĆ
The deep and numerous crises that have gripped the world over the last fifteen or so years experienced one of the possible peaks precisely in the coronavirus pandemic.
Prior to the pandemic, it could have been said that dissatisfaction was a feeling permeating the world. The pandemic made fear the unifying feeling. And dissatisfaction neither dissipated nor was it suppressed with this – it is still there, smouldering under the radar of public attention.
Left without many of the public events that it needs like oxygen, culture that was already globally marginalised became even more marginalised during the pandemic. Reduced to small spaces of public influence, contemporary culture was lost from sight during the pandemic, due to the cancelling of recognisable cultural events. However, a period of two years is long enough to start satisfying some cultural needs in other ways, and even with different contents, especially those of an entertaining kind, or some of the heralds of digital worlds.
After all, book fairs and literary festivals couldn’t be held during the time of the pandemic. But one ought to be open. Even prior to the pandemic, book fairs faced the question: what to do today and how to continue to exist in altered social, cultural, media and technological circumstances?
The great challenge of entertainment is the most dangerous threat to the living and active future of culture, and that also goes for literature and publishing. Both culture and literature will exist, but whether they will be socially visible or small oases of devotees who communicate only with each other isn’t the same. Digital media is becoming a strong competitor to print media, which impacts both newspapers and books equally. The developed digital reality brings into question the very concept of book fairs. If we can find all books online, what will fair premieres then be? If publishing rights are bought and sold throughout the year, in constant communication between publishers and literary agencies, book fairs can no longer be exchanges of copyrights.
The Belgrade Book Fair is more of a hypermarket for books than a classic fair. Therein lies both its charm and its problem. Charm because, as the last place in Serbia where all books currently on the market can be seen, it preserves the living contact between writers and readers. Problem because every hypermarket has its own logic, and as a result that isn’t the logic of culture. The figure of the seller has long since relegated the figure of the writer to the periphery at the Belgrade Book Fair, and stands that were once places for meetings and conversations have now become exclusively sales stalls.
In order for it to be even more attractive to the public, which will be its key issue after the pandemic, and in order for it to remain the main book fair between Istanbul and Leipzig, the Belgrade Book Fair must become a place for book premieres, a place for meetings and discussions, and the biggest literary festival in this part of the world. As both a publisher and reader, I believe that this would ensure even better book sales. IN ORDER TO BE EVEN MORE ATTRACTIVE TO THE PUBLIC, THE BELGRADE BOOK FAIR MUST BECOME A PLACE FOR BOOK PREMIERES, A PLACE FOR MEETINGS AND DISCUSSIONS, AND THE BIGGEST LITERARY FESTIVAL IN THIS PART OF THE WORLD
VLADISLAV BAJAC
FOUNDER AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF GEOPOETIKA PUBLISHING, WRITER, MEMBER OF THE BOARD OF THE INTERNATIONAL BELGRADE BOOK FAIR AS A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE ASSOCIATION OF PROFESSIONAL PUBLISHERS OF SERBIA (UPIS)
WE’RE RETURNING TO WRITERS!
All book fairs in the world, from the biggest and most important to the smallest, continue to exist on the map of world publishing, and justifiably so, for multiple reasons.
Regardless of all the technological changes of recent decades that have also come in this area, publishing has maintained a balance between printed (paper) and electronic books. Specifically, following the sudden and somewhat overexaggerated boom in electronic books in the Western Hemisphere, the market of electronic books has stabilised at approximately 30% of total books published. Serbia was rather slow in accepting that trend during those years, but that sped up with the outbreak of COVID-19, for understandable reasons, and firstly because that was enforced. That’s how the share of e-books in total production also increased here.
There are broader reasons why example is important and symptomatic. Namely, it also served to show that the fear of the disappearance of the traditional, printed book was unjustified. It has remained the dominant form of communication with readers. Of course, this doesn’t mean that classic book fairs shouldn’t adapt to new technologies in this or some other way. This means that audiences should be offered digitised content in a more visible way, but in parallel with printed content. That would specifically represent the fulfilling of the basic principle of the sector and of every society: to offer the reading public a choice, based on the principle of a democratic offer, whereby each reader decides THE CONTINUED EXISTENCE OF BOOK FAIRS on their own preferred way of reading. The Belgrade Book Fair should retain some of the traditional forms of communicating with the public, but should also change some of SHOULDN’T BE BROUGHT INTO QUESTION. WE OUGHT TO THINK ABOUT CHANGES TO the instruments of that communication. It should also reduce the THEM: FORM, STAGING VENUE, CONTENT, number of programmes (especially those registered by the publish ers themselves) in order to improve the quality by having fewer of - DEPTH OF MESSAGES them. There should also be a clearer division of the proper, professional segment of publishing from all other collectives for which this is a secondary activity, particularly from those that are excessively connected to the profession and institutions of politics and religion. The fair must also be freed from the ballast of everything that made it a bazaar to a large extent: sponsors with products in places where they don’t belong, all cheap showbiz elements, visual distaste and the cacophony of those sounds that don’t belong to that world. Books mustn’t be an “escape from the present”: they are just a different reality, legitimate and equivalent to all others. Within them live the writers who, admittedly, have got lost somewhere and need to be brought back to the Belgrade Fair’s Hall 1, as well as other places, urgently. We need to open a debate on the state of publishing in Serbia, to amend some laws, to return high-quality literature from all genres to the centre and thereby celebrate education. The possibility for young people to read should be restored, which is now abused by its pliability by other sources of information (that are not educational), cultural articles should be returned to the media and help should be given to remind journalists of cultural values that used to exist. So, the continued existence of book fairs shouldn’t be brought into question. We ought to think about changes to them: form, staging venue, content, depth of messages etc. But their basic function should be left alone, equally everywhere – from Paris and London, to Cairo, Beijing and Frankfurt: encounters live and ‘in person’ between readers and books. That’s how one maintains the ideal temperature of both body and spirit – and of both man and book.
ZORAN HAMOVIĆ
DIRECTOR AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF PUBLISHING COMPANY CLIO; PRESIDENT OF THE ASSOCIATION OF PROFESSIONAL PUBLISHERS OF SERBIA (UPIS)
ONLY THE SKY IS THE LIMIT
Book fairs are primarily seeking ways to survive as events. In that sense, some try, in various ways, to use more PR activities to reach and motivate more potential participants and visitors. However, for meeting and for the needs of, for example, buyers and sellers, the space of a fair under domes is not essential. Shaping the atmosphere of the fair is the joy of meeting with writers and publishers, as direct conversations are what motivate and compel people from other cities to come to Belgrade and stroll between the stands. Perhaps it is indeed the largest bookshop attended by everyone, or almost everyone, who publishes books and other useful publications. The internet can provide information, but it cannot also provide the sense of belonging to a group of people who continue to be devoted to books, believing that this reality can be changed, but not abolished. Nevertheless, if we speak in terms of numbers and percentages, if we quantify what is happening to print publications – from weekly newspapers to books – it is certain that someone will be able to say that there is no going back to the past, particularly after the experience of the coronavirus pandemic, but rather that there is an intensive development of electronic communications and non-exclusive exchanges of content.
The adaptation of fair events should head in the direction of digitalisation and creation of the virtual connecting of authors, visitors and journalists, which technology now makes possible. Only the sky is the limit in terms of the ways in which exceptional programmes can be made with relatively little funding. By combining the physical presence and video links, animation and the creation of books as a guide to augmented reality provides the opportunity for us to create interesting programmes for fresher and more desirable mise-en-scènes. The Frankfurt Book Fair is among those from which we can learn the most. It provided an excellent example of what can be done even during the pandemic, and actually provided directions to the world of new ways of gathering and functioning, revealing the future of what we’ve called a book and a book fair.
Should book fairs represent a way of fleeing the not-so-pleasant present or try to bring awareness to that present? Art is often unjustifiably defined as an escape from reality. When it is in fact the offer of a different reality that refines the existing one. You don’t get far by fleeing. But satisfaction lies in adjusting the existing reality, the feeling that we have done something better for ourselves and others. Good solutions and inspiring gestures have changed habits, created a more felicitous and noble reality in which it is desirable to live. Talented people change the environment in which they find themselves and entice others to follow them. The Fair is first and foremost a large gathering of creative people in action. If they speak against populism and dictators in an attempt to initiate consciousness, then the fair makes sense, if that isn’t there, then it’s just a regular discount book sale and a gallery of various loons The Fair is first and foremost a large gathering of creative people in action. If their spirit is accentuated there, if their literature and ideas speak there, if they disrupt the public internally and externally with their charisma, by raising attention, if they speak against populism and dictators in an attempt to initiate consciousness, then the fair makes sense. If that isn’t there, then it’s just a regular discount book sale and a gallery of various loons who lease a stand to attract the attention of those who are similar to them. Massiveness doesn’t mean much in and of itself; less is always better. The privilege of the future has always resided in the small. THE INTERNET CAN PROVIDE INFORMATION, BUT IT CANNOT ALSO PROVIDE THE SENSE OF BELONGING TO A GROUP OF PEOPLE WHO CONTINUE TO BE DEVOTED TO BOOKS, BELIEVING THAT THIS REALITY CAN BE CHANGED, BUT NOT ABOLISHED
Slobodan G. Markovich, MBE, Head of the Centre for British Studies, Faculty of Political Science, Belgrade
HM Queen Elizabeth II, Serbia and Yugoslavia
In the history of the British monarchy, Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022) was the longestreigning sovereign. She was the queen of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth realm for more than 70 years. During her long life and reign, she took part in several events relevant for British-Serbian and BritishYugoslav relations
Her father, Prince Albert, Duke of York (1895-1952) became King George VI in 1936 and reigned till 1952. He was the first person from the British Royal family to establish close relations with Serbia and Yugoslavia and participated in at least five symbolically important events that linked Serbia and Yugoslavia with Britain. In the early spring of 1916, Crown Prince and Regent Alexander of Serbia visited Britain. On that occasion, Prince Albert received the Prince Regent at Charing Cross station in London and escorted him to see his father King George V. That was the first visit of a Serbian head of state to the United Kingdom. The Times reported that: “the reception accorded the Crown Prince outside the station was magnificent, and no foreign visitor has been more warmly received.” (The Times, 1st April, 1916). This was a u-turn in mutual relations since the Belgrade regicide of 1903 had produced a particularly negative impression in Britain and even led to a three-year-long break in diplomatic relations. The Great War turned everything around, and British public opinion became the champion of its small and heroic ally, Serbia. The British court endorsed this kind of appraisal during the visit of the Prince Regent to London.
After the end of the Great War, Prince Albert twice visited Belgrade. On 8th June, 1922, Prince Albert acted as ‘kum’ (chief witness / godfather) at the royal wedding of King Alexander Karađorđević and Princess Marie of Romania, great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria. On that occasion, Prince Albert represented his parents, the King and the Queen. (The Times, 9th June, 1922). In October 1923, he came again, this time to attend the christening of the infant son of Queen Marie and King Alexander. On 20th October, the Duke and Duchess of York were greeted in Belgrade, in front of the royal palace, where “in spite of the cold, large crowds awaited the arrival of the Koom and Koomitsa [Godfather and Godmother].” The Duke of York held the baby throughout the service, as Christian Orthodox tradition demands, and Serbian Patriarch Dimitrije conducted the ceremony.
(The Times, 21st October, 1923). It is important to mention that the Serbian word “koom” (or kum in more modern spelling) can denote both a best man at a wedding and a godfather or godmother at a christening. The Duke of York represented his father as the best man of King Alexander in 1922 and was godfather to his son in 1923. The baby was named Peter, after his grandfather Peter I the Unifier. The Duke of York also acted as the best man at the wedding of Prince Paul two days later. Prince Albert was the second son of King George V, who was succeeded by his eldest son Edward VIII (r. January-December 1936), and only after his abdication did the Duke of York become the king of the United Kingdom as George VI.
On 20th March, 1944, King Peter of Yugoslavia married Princess Alexandra of Greece and Denmark. On that occasion, King George VI and King George of Greece acted as witnesses. Finally, on 24th October, 1945, the christening of Crown Prince Alexander took place at Westminster Abbey in London, in the presence of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. King George VI and his daughter Princess Elizabeth were godparents to the Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia. The ceremony was conducted by Patriarch Gavrilo and Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich, in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. (The Times, 25th October, 1945) Princess Elizabeth was 19 at the time of this ceremony and held the Crown Prince in her hands. The event made such an impression on her that, many decades later, she vividly described that moment to several Serbian diplomats.
Although the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was an official British ally until 1945, the victory of the Yugoslav communist-led Partisans in the civil war led to the suspension of the Yugoslav monarchy in November 1945. In the first years of communist Yugoslavia, its relations with both the U.S. and the UK were fraught with tension. Everything changed suddenly in June 1948, when the Soviet Union expelled Yugoslavia from the association of communist countries. After that, Yugoslavia found unlikely allies in the Western countries. In the 1950-53 period, communist Yugoslavia received assistance from the U.S. and UK, and the Yugoslav leadership visited Britain in March 1953. It was the first meeting of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito and Queen Elizabeth, but since the Queen had not yet been crowned, it did not have the rank of an official visit, but rather a “private own”. Nevertheless, Yugoslav President Tito was received with full pomp, which was very important for him because, at this time, Yugoslavia was making efforts to build bridges with Western states.
The rapprochement between the two states proved rather short-lived. The Suez Crisis in 1956 brought the two countries into a new dispute, which was amplified during the decolonisation of British Africa between 1956 and 1966. Yugoslavia’s direct opposition to Israel in 1967 was another low point. Only after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1968 did Communist Yugoslavia try to re-establish warmer relations with the West, including Britain. In the 1970s, mutual relations
1945, BAPTISM OF CROWN PRINCE ALEXANDER, WESTMISTER ABBEY
1972, PARK OF FRIENDSHIP
31.03.1916, REGENT ALEXANDER AND THE DUKE OF YORK 1972, AVALA
reached a new high point that included several visits on both sides. In November 1971, the Yugoslav President made his first one-day official visit to the UK and had lunch with the Queen at Buckingham Palace. The visit was organised under “unusually stringent security precautions.” (The Times, 8th November, 1971)
In October 1972, Queen Elizabeth, accompanied by Prince Philip and their daughter Anne, made a four-day visit to Yugoslavia. It was the first communist country she visited, and that very fact was not received favourably in some quarters in the West. In Britain, the visit was seen “as yet
another step in the readjustment of the British monarchy to the requirements of present-day realities.” (The Times, 17th October, 1972) At that moment, Yugoslavia was going through a deep crisis due to the re-emergence of ethnic tensions and the persecution of intellectuals, students and dissidents by the Yugoslav communist regime, which prompted criticism in many circles in the West. Under such conditions, Belgrade gave the Queen an “enthusiastic reception despite the political crisis”. British journalists were somewhat surprised that environment in the age of modern technology: “You cannot feed the beauty of the countryside into a computer and statistics cannot themselves make clean air, sparkling rivers or contented community.” (The Times, October 19, 1972).
The Queen was awarded the golden plaque of the City of Belgrade by its mayor. On that occasion, she said at the Belgrade City Hall: “Some 50 years ago, my father and mother were in a position to visit Belgrade and therefore I am particularly happy to be here with my husband
and daughter.” (Politika, 18th October, 1972) This was a discreet reminder to the Queen’s hosts of the relations her family had had with the Yugoslav royal family.
During her trip, the Queen also visited Zagreb, where “a crowd of 15,000 people applauded”, and spoke of the close contacts between Britain and Croatia. As Dessa Trevisan of The Times noted: “The toast was addressed to the Serbs in Belgrade and to the Croatians in Zagreb, reflecting the Queen’s awareness of the delicate relationship between the two largest nations of Yugoslavia.” (The Times, 21st October, 1972).
Visits continued in the 1970s, and President Tito paid a short visit to the UK in March 1978, then in October that same year, Prince Charles visited Yugoslavia. At the funeral of the Yugoslav President in May 1980, the British delegation included Prince Philip, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington.
The official visits in the 1970s happened in the period when Josip Broz, the Yugoslav life-long president, after he met with Brezhnev in Belgrade in 1971 and again in June 1972 in Moscow, was seen in the West as getting too close to the Soviet Union. In retrospect, one can see that the Queen’s visit to Yugoslavia took place between Tito’s visits to Moscow in 1972 and 1973.
What happened in the early 1950s when communist Yugoslavia came closer to the West is nowadays known in historiography as a “Cold War anomaly”. A new climax in British-Yugoslav relations took place in the 1970s. In 1988, one of the last British ambassadors to Communist Yugoslavia, Andrew Wood, aptly summarised the process begun in 1948: “A British-Yugoslav marriage of convenience had nevertheless begun – and marriages of convenience are often the most durable.”
Communist Yugoslavia collapsed in 1991 and the Wars for Yugoslav Succession followed. The Queen never returned to Yugoslavia or Serbia after 1972. In 1995, she attended the 50th birthday celebration of Crown Prince Alexander in London and danced a waltz with the Crown Prince, whom she had baptised half a century earlier.
Finally, in 2016, Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, made a regional tour and visited Zagreb, Belgrade, Priština and Podgorica. During his visit to Belgrade and Serbia, Prince Charles, in addition to official meetings with the officials of Serbia, had special meetings with the Serbian Patriarch and the Friends of Mount Athos (FOMA) and paid a visit to the Temple of St. Sava in Belgrade and Kovilj Monastery. He also visited Crown Prince Alexander and was shown an exhibition on the mutual contacts between the two dynasties. On 17th March, 2016, in his address in the National Assembly of Serbia, he singled out some historical and public figures that symbolised relations between the United Kingdom and the region, including Father and Bishop Nikolai Velimirović, Flora Sandes, Fitzroy Maclean, Rita Ora, Novak Đoković and Mother Theresa.
What emerges from this short review is that, in one hundred years spanning from 1916 to 2016, the British Royal family gave a very important contribution to the development of British-Serbian, British-Yugoslav and BritishBalkan relations.
BAPTISM OF HRH CROWN PRINCE PETER, 21ST OCTOBER, 1923. KING ALEXANDER, PRINCESS ILEANA, ROMANIAN KING FERDINAND AND QUEEN MARIE (SITTING), DUCHESS AND DUKE OF YORK
the Queen’s host, Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, who was “unusually stern”, could not wait with his announcement about the withdrawal of his support from the Serbian Party leadership till the visit was over.
During their visit, the Queen and Prince Philip laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Hero at Avala Mountain. The Queen also planted a tree in the Park of Friendship and visited the Commonwealth War Cemetery and the University of Belgrade. She spoke “of the traditional respect and understanding between Britons and Serbs and of the sincere admiration the British have for the long and courageous Serbian struggle, first to achieve freedom and then, with other constituent republics of the Yugoslav federation, to build a united nation.” The Queen also mentioned the dangers of neglecting the
