Timothy Garton Ash

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZEIn 1978 Timothy Garton Ash went to live in Berlin to see what that divided city could teach him about tyranny and freedom. Fifteen years later, by then internationally famous for his reportage of the downfall of communism in Central Europe, he returned to look at his Stasi file which bore the code-name Romeo. Compiled by the East German secret police, with the assistance of both professional spies and ordinary people turned informer, it contained a meticulous record of his earlier life in Berlin.In this memoir, he describes rediscovering his younger self through the eyes of the Stasi, and then confronting those who had informed against him. Moving from document to remembrance, from the offices of Britains own security service to the living rooms of retired Stasi officers, The File is a personal narrative as gripping, as disquieting, and as morally provocative as any fiction by George Orwell or Graham Greene. And it is all true.

Timothy Garton Ash holds a mirror that magnifies... He writes masterfully and with compassion - Neal Ascherson, ObserverFor more than thirty years, Timothy Garton Ash has traveled among truth tellers and political charlatans to record, with scalpel-sharp precision, what he has found. Facts are Subversive, which collects his writings since the millennium, addresses some of the crucial questions of our time: what happens to people who have endured long dictatorships when they try to found a democratic state? How can freedom from tyranny be won? How are free expression, equality before the law and equal rights for men and women sustained in a society of different faiths and ethnicities? This is history of the present on a scale by turns panoramic and human: urgent, exhilarating and necessary.

The Magic Lantern is one of those rare books that capture history in the making, written by an author who was witness to some of the most remarkable moments that marked the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. Timothy Garton Ash was there in Warsaw, on 4 June, when the communist government was humiliated by Solidarity in the first semi-free elections since the Second World War. He was there in Budapest, twelve days later, when Imre Nagy - thirty-one years after his execution - was finally given his proper funeral. He was there in Berlin, as the Wall opened. And most remarkable of all, he was there in Prague, in the back rooms of the Magic Lantern theatre, with Vaclav Havel and the members of Civic Forum, as they made their Velvet Revolution.

WINNER OF THE 2017 AL-RODHAN PRIZENever in human history was there such a chance for freedom of expression. If we have Internet access, any one of us can publish almost anything we like and potentially reach an audience of millions. Never was there a time when the evils of unlimited speech flowed so easily across frontiers: violent intimidation, gross violations of privacy, tidal waves of abuse. A pastor burns a Koran in Florida and UN officials die in Afghanistan.Drawing on a lifetime of writing about dictatorships and dissidents, Timothy Garton Ash argues that in this connected world that he calls cosmopolis, the way to combine freedom and diversity is to have more but also better free speech. Across all cultural divides we must strive to agree on how we disagree. He draws on a thirteen-language global online project - freespeechdebate.com - conducted out of Oxford University and devoted to doing just that.With vivid examples, from his personal experience of Chinas Orwellian censorship apparatus to the controversy around Charlie Hebdo to a very English court case involving food writer Nigella Lawson, he proposes a framework for civilized conflict in a world where we are all becoming neighbours.Particularly timely. . . Garton Ash argues forcefully that. . . there is an increasing need for freer speech. . . A powerful, comprehensive book - The Economist

En unos tiempos que parecen permanentemente al borde del caos y la incertidumbre, en los que los «opinadores» sólo añaden ruido a la confusión, los textos aquí reunidos, escritos entre 2000 y 2010 –u

En 1992, después de que se hicieran públicos los archivos de la antigua República Democrática Alemana, el historiador británico Timothy Garton Ash viajó a Berlín con el fin de averiguar si por casualidad en los archivos de la Stasi habia algun expediente sobre el. Para su asombro, descubrio no solo que lo habia, sino que, para el Servicio Secreto de la Alemania comunista, el era conocido como Romeo. El caso es que, en 1978, recien licenciado en historia moderna, Garton Ash se habia trasladado a Berlin para investigar los movimientos de resistencia al regimen nazi y habia vivido cerca de tres años en ambos sectores de la ciudad dividida. Durante esos años, trabo amistades y se movio a sus anchas sin problemas aparentes. A partir de la estremecedora revelacion que para el supuso la lectura de su expediente, Garton Ash, contrastando la informacion sobre Romeo con sus propios recuerdos, las anotaciones en su diario y las cartas que conserva, nos revela cuan distinta fue la realidad que el creyo vivir de la que la Stasi creo en torno a el. Parte, pues, en busca de aquellos que en el pasado el habia considerado como sus amigos, pero que, en realidad no habian hecho mas que vigilarle y delatarle, y consigue incluso entrevistarse con algunos de ellos. No le impulsa ni la ira ni la indignacion: lo unico que desea es comprender. Y concluye: Lo que encuentras no es tanto maldad como debilidad humana: una vasta antologia de debilidades humanas. Y, cuando hablas con los implicados, lo que descubres no es tanto una deliberada falta de honestidad como la capacidad infinita que tenemos todos para engañarnos a nosotros mismos.

Political writer and activist Timothy Garton Ash has travelled the globe and undertaken countless interviews - ranging from conversations with Bush, Blair and Schröder to encounters with farmers in Kansas and soldiers in Aldershot - to challenge the myth that America and Europe can never meet. This radical and visionary book shows why our current predicament actually reveals an opportunity for citizens everywhere to work together, end the divide between the West and the Rest - and create a truly free world.

Tremendously enjoyable thoughtful honest open self deprecating Dominic Sandbrook Sunday Times Readers could hardly wish for a wiser guide panoramic defiantly hopeful Financial TimesDrawing from the people who lived it Homelands explores how Europe slowly recovered and rebuilt from World War Two And then faltered Timothy Garton Ash our greatest writer about Europe has spent a lifetime studying Europe and this deeply felt book is full of vivid experiences from his father s memories of D Day and his own surveillance at the hands of the Stasi to interviewing 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 Homelands is at once a living breathing history of a period of unprecedented progress a clear eyed account of how so much then went wrong and an urgent call to the citizens of this great old continent to understand and defend what we have collectively achieved The right book for Europe at the right time Timothy Snyder author of On Tyranny A moving love letter to Europe Lea Ypi author of Free

Britain may not be divided physically, but it lives culturally, economically and socially in a constant tension between Europe and America. And it's divided politically between a Right which argues that our place is with America, not Europe, and a Left which claims the opposite. This is today's English civil war. Both sides tell us we must choose between Europe and America. But how can we choose, when Britain has two faces pointing in opposite directions? Garton Ash argues that the beginning of national wisdom is to accept that this is who we are, that Britain faces both ways. What follows is, he says, a liberation, and a challenge. In this stimulating new book, Garton Ash examines how this has happened, and argues that Britain should resist choosing between Europe and America, but embrace a new role in harmony with both, and that instead of destructively bickering as we have for decades, we should be concentrating on grander and more durable aspirations for political freedom.

Aquest és un llibre d?història i de memòria personal, un reportatge viu del destí d?Europa des de la Segona Guerra Mundial fins als nostres dies, reconstruït a través de la mirada i la trajectòria vi

Una asombrosa mezcla de historia contemporánea, reportaje de investigación y memoria íntima de la pluma de uno de los escritores que mejor han escrito sobre Europa. «El libro que Europa necesitaba, e

Tras la buena acogida que obtuvo El expediente (Andanzas 362), nos complace presentar la obra más reciente de Timothy Garton Ash, uno de los más agudos observadores de la realidad europea,. Se trata

Tremendously enjoyable ... thoughtful, honest, open, self-deprecating' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times'Readers could hardly wish for a wiser guide ... panoramic ...defiantly hopeful' Financial TimesDrawing from the people who lived it, Homelands explores how Europe slowly recovered and rebuilt from World War Two. And then faltered. Timothy Garton Ash, our greatest writer about Europe, has spent a lifetime studying Europe and this deeply felt book is full of vivid experiences: from his father's memories of D-Day and his own surveillance at the hands of the Stasi to interviewing 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.Homelands is at once a living, breathing history of a period of unprecedented progress, a clear-eyed account of how so much then went wrong and an urgent call to the citizens of this great old continent to understand and defend what we have collectively achieved. 'The right book for Europe, at the right time' Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny'A moving love letter to Europe' Lea Ypi, author of Fre

Un excepcional relato en primera persona de la caída del comunismo en Europa del Este. «La batalla por la libertad nunca se gana finalmente. Hay que librarla de nuevo en cada generación». La caída de