Budapest 2006

Marcus Ferrar, author and communication consultant, was born and brought up in Britain. He lived for over 30 years in various European countries and now lives in Oxford. He holds dual British and Swiss citizenship. His father is British and his mother a refugee from Nazi Germany. He holds a BA degree in French and German from the University of London.

He joined Reuters as a journalist and was assigned to Eastern Europe during the Cold War, and later to Portugal during the Revolution. He was the sole Western correspondent in East Berlin, and covered Prague after the Soviet invasion. He subsequently ran a business sector for Reuters, and worked as a group marketing and PR director.

In 2005, he and John Corsellis published Slovenia 1945: Memories of Death and Survival after World War II in London. It led to an Early Day Motion signed by 62 MPs in the UK Parliament asking the British government to express regret to Slovenia for forcibly repatriating 12,000 surrendered Slovene soldiers from Austria to their deaths in 1945. The Slovene version of the book, translated by Evelina Ferrar, was a best-seller in Slovenia in 2006.

As a communication consultant, his clients have included British Airways, the World Economic Forum, Skyguide (air traffic control) and Kodak. He won the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Gold Quill Award of Excellence for Multi-Audience Communication, and was 2005-6 Chair of its judging board. He has consulted media companies in Romania and Bulgaria and taught journalism in the Ukraine.

He has worked as speech-writer for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva. He lectured at the Zürcher Hochschule, the IEDC School of Management in Bled, Slovenia, the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, and the Centre for Security Studies in Geneva.

He is married to a Slovene and has a daughter and step-daughter. In his free time, he skis and climbs mountains (Matterhorn, Mont Blanc).