Magda’s Boy: How George Szirtes invented his mother

For much of his career, award-winning poet George Szirtes has been trying different ways of putting his family's extraordinary experiences into words.
Szirtes's mother, Magda, was a Hungarian photographer who survived two concentration camps before building a life wife his father, Laszlo, in postwar Budapest. Laszlo managed to escape the labour camps of Ukraine and went on to occupy a senior position in the Ministry of Building under the new communist regime. After Russian tanks rolled into the city in 1956, they escaped with their two young sons to England.
Szirtes has explored these events numerous times in verse, but has recently done so for the first time in prose, in a memoir about his mother, The Photographer at Sixteen. Filmmaker Anthony Wilks spent some time with Szirtes to find out how he's gone about writing this story, and discover what it's like to be a Hungarian-born poet living in England and writing in English.
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[@amalibrahim33]

your sensitivity always inspires me dear George..

[@HilarySeabrook]

What a wonderful programme.

[@paulagrierson3243]

Touching and inspirational capturing the magic of words expressed with humanity, love and intelligence

[@deborahsomerville3260]

George is such an engaging person, and this film is so amazing. Your mother took such amazing photos of you. What a treasure you carried in your case.

[@aaroninky]

tremendous, thank you for this.

[@sattarabus]

I first encountered Szirtes In The London Magazine edited by Alan Ross ages ago. His short poems captivated me. I may have read and noted down some more poems by him from Encounter magazine. I looked up the unpronounceable name Szirtes in Daniel Jones Pronouncing Dictionary. No dice.

[@JF-zv4oc]

Prof Sattar Basra If it helps, this is how it is pronounced: Sz = the S sound in ‘silence’ or ‘sun’ Ir = the first syllable of ‘iridescent’ or the middle letters of ‘Siri’ Tes = ‘tesh’ to rhyme with ‘mesh’. ‘Szir’ is the stressed syllable and ‘tes’ unstressed. The voiceover pronouncing it as ‘Sir-tees’ is not how it would be pronounced in Hungarian.