Timothy Garton Ash (born 12 July 1955) is a British historian, author and commentator. He is Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford. Most of his work has been concerned with the contemporary history of Europe, with a special focus on Central and Eastern Europe.
For postgraduate study he went to St Antony's College, Oxford, and then, in the still divided Berlin, the Free University in West Berlin and the Humboldt University in East Berlin. During his studies in East Berlin, he was under surveillance from the Stasi, which served as the basis for his 1997 book The File.[3] Garton Ash cut a suspect figure to the Stasi, who regarded him as a "bourgeois-liberal" and potential British spy.[4]
Although he denies being or having been a British intelligence operative, Garton Ash described himself as a "soldier behind enemy lines" and described the German Democratic Republic as a "very nasty regime indeed".[4]
In 2005, Garton Ash was listed in Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people.[9] The article says that "shelves are where most works of history spend their lives. But the kind of history Garton Ash writes is more likely to lie on the desks of the world's decision makers."
Geopolitics
Garton Ash describes himself as a liberal internationalist.[10] He is a supporter of what he calls the free world and liberal democracy, represented in his view by the European Union, the United States as a superpower, and Angela Merkel's leadership of Germany. Garton Ash opposed Scottish independence and argued for Britishness, writing in The Guardian: "being British has changed into something worth preserving, especially in a world of migration where peoples are going to become ever more mixed up together. As men and women from different parts of the former British empire have come to live here in ever larger numbers, the post-imperial identity has become, ironically but not accidentally, the most liberal, civic, inclusive one."[11]
Garton Ash first came to prominence during the Cold War as a supporter of free speech and human rights within countries which were part of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, paying particular attention to Poland and Germany. In more recent times he has represented a British liberal pro-EU viewpoint, nervous at the rise of Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Brexit. He is strongly opposed to conservative and populist leaders of EU nations, such as Viktor Orbán of Hungary, arguing that Merkel should "freeze him out", evoking "appeasement".[12] Garton Ash was particularly upset about Orbán's move against George Soros' Central European University.[12] Anti-Soviet themes and Poland remain topics of interest for Garton Ash; once a promoter of the anti-Eastern Bloc movement in Poland, he notes with regret the move away from liberalism and globalism towards populism and authoritarianism under socially conservative political and religious leaders such as Jarosław Kaczyński, in a similar manner to his criticisms of Hungary's Orbán.[13]
In reviewing his book, Homelands: A Personal History of Europe, veteran Newsweek Journalist Andrew Nagorski wrote: "It bluntly describes the harsh political repression and monstrous economic failures that characterized the countries behind what was known as the Iron Curtain, while also evocatively capturing the 'abnormal normality' of a system that ruthlessly quashed all hopes for change, yet inspired people to 'make the best' of their seemingly hopeless situation." In that book, Garton Ash describes his meeting with Władysław Bartoszewski and having been "struck not only by the loud, rapid-fire voice of this senior member of the opposition, but also by his confident prediction that the Russian empire would collapse by the end of the century. This was at a time when the Cold War division of Europe appeared to be an unalterable fact of life."[14]
Personal life
Garton Ash and his Polish-born wife Danuta live primarily in Oxford, England, and also near Stanford University in California as part of his work with the Hoover Institution.[15] They have two sons, Tom Ash, a web developer based in Canada, and Alec Ash, an author and editor focused on China.[15] His elder brother, Christopher, is a Church of England clergyman.[16]
(edited, with Adam Roberts, Michael J. Willis, and Rory McCarthy) Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters (Oxford University Press, 2016) ISBN9780198749028
Obrona Liberalizmu (Fundacja Kultura Liberalna, 2022) ISBN 9788366619067
Homelands: A Personal History of Europe (Yale University Press, 2023)[17]ISBN9780300257076
Solidarity, full name Independent Self-Governing Trade Union "Solidarity", is a Polish trade union founded in August 1980 at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland. Subsequently, it was the first independent trade union in a Warsaw Pact country to be recognised by the state.
David John Moore Cornwell, better known by his pen name John le Carré, was a British author, best known for his espionage novels, many of which were successfully adapted for film or television. A "sophisticated, morally ambiguous writer", he is considered one of the greatest novelists of the postwar era. During the 1950s and 1960s, he worked for both the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Near the end of his life, le Carré became an Irish citizen.
Viktor Mihály Orbán is a Hungarian lawyer and politician who has been Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010, previously holding the office from 1998 to 2002, and the leader of the Fidesz political party since 2003, and previously from 1993 to 2000. He was re-elected as prime minister in 2014, 2018, and 2022. On 29 November 2020, he became the country's longest-serving prime minister.
Jonathan Steele is a British journalist and the author of several books on international affairs.
Matthew Robert Ralph d'Ancona is an English journalist and editor-at-large of The New European. A former deputy editor of The Sunday Telegraph, he was appointed editor of The Spectator in February 2006, a post he retained until August 2009.
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 is a 2005 non-fiction book written by British historian Tony Judt examining the six decades of European history from the end of World War II in Europe in 1945 to 2005. Postwar is widely considered one of the foremost accounts of contemporary European history, particularly with regards to the history of Eastern Europe. It has been translated into French and German.
Margaret Olwen MacMillan, is a Canadian historian and professor at the University of Oxford. She is former provost of Trinity College, Toronto, and professor of history at the University of Toronto and previously at Ryerson University. MacMillan is an expert on the history of international relations.
Timothy David Snyder is an American historian specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust. He is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.
Liberal internationalism is a foreign policy doctrine that supports international institutions, open markets, cooperative security, and liberal democracy. At its core, it holds that states should participate in international institutions that uphold rules-based norms, promote liberal democracy, and facilitate cooperation on transnational problems.
Ramachandra "Ram" Guha is an Indian historian, environmentalist, writer and public intellectual whose research interests include social, political, contemporary, environmental and cricket history, and the field of economics. He is an important authority on the history of modern India.
The Lionel Gelber Prize is a literary award for English non-fiction books on foreign policy. Founded in 1989 by Canadian diplomat Lionel Gelber, the prize honors "the world’s best non-fiction book in English on foreign affairs that seeks to deepen public debate on significant international issues." A prize of CA$50,000, is awarded to the winner. The award is presented annually by the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.
Civil resistance is a form of political action that relies on the use of nonviolent resistance by ordinary people to challenge a particular power, force, policy or regime. Civil resistance operates through appeals to the adversary, pressure and coercion: it can involve systematic attempts to undermine or expose the adversary's sources of power. Forms of action have included demonstrations, vigils and petitions; strikes, go-slows, boycotts and emigration movements; and sit-ins, occupations, constructive program, and the creation of parallel institutions of government.
In 1949, shortly before he died, the English author George Orwell prepared a list of notable writers and other people he considered to be unsuitable as possible writers for the anti-communist propaganda activities of the Information Research Department, a secret propaganda organisation of the British state under the Foreign Office. A copy of the list was published in The Guardian in 2003 and the original was released by the Foreign Office soon after.
Sir Adam Roberts is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford, a senior research fellow in Oxford University's Department of Politics and International Relations, and an emeritus fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.
Sándor Csoóri was a Hungarian poet, essayist, writer, and politician.
Ian Angus was a British librarian and a scholar on George Orwell.
Tony Robert Judt was an English historian, essayist and university professor who specialised in European history. Judt moved to New York and served as the Erich Maria Remarque Professor in European Studies at New York University and director of NYU's Remarque Institute. He was a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. In 1996 Judt was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2007 a corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.
Florian Hoffmann is a German social entrepreneur, author, investor and founder of The DO. He speaks on topics including the green business transformation, innovation and the future of lifelong learning.
Bernd Wegner is a German historian who specialises in military history and the history of Nazism. Since 1997 he has been professor of modern history at the Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg, Germany.
The British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding is a prize granted by the British Academy for "outstanding scholarly contributions to global cultural understanding". The prize is £25,000.
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