Homelands: A Personal History of Europe - Updated with a New Chapter

(Paperback)

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Drawing on fifty years of interviews and experience, Homelands is a living, breathing contemporary history of Europe by one of our greatest writers 'A moving love letter to Europe' Lea Ypi, author of Free Homelands is a stunning blend of contemporary history, reporting and memoir by our greatest writer about Europe. Drawing on half a century of travel and thinking, Homelands tells the story of Europe since its emergence from wartime hell in 1945- how it slowly recovered and rebuilt, liberated and united to come close to the ideal of a Europe 'whole, free and at peace'. And then faltered. Timothy Garton Ash has spent a lifetime studying Europe. Highly personal and deeply felt, this book is also full of vivid experiences, encounters and anecdotes- from his father's memories of D-Day to interviewing Polish dockers, Albanian guerrillas in the mountains of Kosovo, and angry teenagers in the poorest quarters of Paris, as well as advising prime ministers, chancellors and presidents in the UK, Europe and the US. Homelands is both a living, breathing history of a period of unprecedented progress and a clear-eyed account of how so much then went wrong, from the financial crisis of 2008 to the war in Ukraine. At its heart, this book is an urgent call to the citizens of this great old continent to understand and defend what we have collectively achieved.

Reviews

A panoramic contemporary history of Europe, in which sharp political analysis is enlivened with personal memoir - drawn from decades of distinguished work as a journalist and academic * FT Summer Book of 2023 *
Readers could hardly wish for a wiser guide. Over 40 years, Garton Ash has both watched from the stands and played on the pitch in the arena of European change * Financial Times *
Outstanding ... Homelands is an elegantly written piece of contemporary history by one of Britain's leading public intellectuals * Spectator *
At once accessible, engaging and erudite, Homelands is an extraordinary accomplishment, much like the author's life; it is a heartfelt call to arms * Times Literary Supplement *
Personal memories matter in Europe, where the remembrance of recent horrors has shaped modern politics ... Homelands is a trip down memory lane on a continental scale ... insightful [and] downright chilling, too * Economist *

Author Bio

Timothy Garton Ash was 17 when Britain joined the European Community and 64 when Britain left it. In the intervening years he has lived and breathed European politics, witnessing some of the most dramatic scenes in its history, interviewing many of its key players and analysing how life has evolved for ordinary Europeans across the breadth of the continent. He is Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford and a columunist for the Guardian. He has won many prizes and plaudits for his journalism and books, including The File, his riveting autobiographical account of investigating the contents of his Stasi file after the fall of East Germany.