Timothy Garton Ash: 'From Post-War Europe to Post-Wall Europe - and Back'

In his new book Homelands: A Personal History of Europe, Timothy Garton Ash gives a unique account of the history of Europe since 1945. This is history illustrated by memoir and reportage. Garton Ash draws on his extensive personal notes from 50 years of events witnessed, places visited and history makers encountered (from Margaret Thatcher to Vladimir Putin) to chart the rise and then faltering of the quest for a 'Europe whole and free'.

In this lecture, Professor Garton Ash will extend the analysis in Homelands to offer an interpretation of how Europe progressed from the post-War period (famously analyzed by Tony Judt) to what he calls the post-Wall period. And why it then regressed, in a 'downward turn' after 2008, culminating in Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 – beginning the largest war in Europe since 1945. What did Europe get right? Where did it go wrong? Why?

About the Speaker

Timothy Garton Ash is Professor of European Studies, University of Oxford, Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is the author of eleven books of contemporary history and political writing which have explored many facets of the history of Europe over the last half-century. They include The Polish Revolution: Solidarity, The File: A Personal History, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent, Facts are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade without a Name and Free Speech: Ten Principles For a Connected World. He also writes a column on international affairs in the Guardian, which is widely syndicated, and is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, amongst other journals. From 2001 to 2006, he was Director of the European Studies Centre at St Antony's College, Oxford, where he now directs the Dahrendorf Programme. The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of ’89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, & Prague was reissued in 2019 with a new chapter exploring the 30 years since 1989 in post-communist Europe. His latest book, Homelands: A Personal History of Europe, was recently published and translations into more than 18 other European languages (including Portuguese) have either been published or are in preparation. Prizes he has received for his writing include the Somerset Maugham Award, the Prix Européen de l'Essai and the George Orwell Prize. In 2017, he was awarded the International Charlemagne Prize of the city of Aachen, for services to European unity.

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