Dr Mark Thompson

Reader in Modern History, University of East Anglia. He received his BA and PhD at the University of Cambridge. He first visited the eastern Adriatic when Croatia was part of Yugoslavia, and he returns every year. He lived in Slano and Dubrovnik while working as a peacekeeper for the United Nations. He also lived in Zagreb, as spokesman (on behalf of the Foreign Office) for the Croatia mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. A Paper House, his ‘brilliant account of collapsing Yugoslavia’ (London Review of Books), appeared in 1992. A study of Italy and the Habsburg Empire in the First World War (The White War) won the Hessell-Tiltman Prize. His history of Italy in the 1940s, Like a Dragon’s Back, will be published in 2026. He has also translated fiction by Croatian and Italian writers.