The skeptical doctor decides to visit Hungary to the shock of his right-thinking (that is to say, left-liberal) friends over at Quadrant.

I had been to Budapest several times before: it is undoubtedly one of the most pleasant capitals in Europe, grand and dignified but not overwhelmingly large. I first went in 1970, when no one was horrified by my proposed journey: it was merely a communist state, that was all, and therefore not the object of obloquy.