Background
Timothy Garton Ash was born on July 12, 1955, in London, United Kingdom to the family of John Garton Ash and Lorna Judith Freke. His older brother Christopher is a Church of England clergyman.
Garton Ash was educated at St Edmund's School, Hindhead, Surrey.
Garton Ash was educated at Sherborne School, a well-known public school in Dorset in South West England.
Garton Ash holds a Bachelor of Arts in modern history from Exeter College, Oxford.
Garton Ash holds a Master of Arts in modern history from St. Antony's College, Oxford.
Garton Ash did postgraduate studies at the Free University in West Berlin.
Garton Ash did postgraduate studies at Humboldt University in East Berlin.
Timothy Garton Ash receiving the Charlemagne Prize.
Order of Merit, Czech Republic
Order of Merit, Germany
Order of Merit, Poland
Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, United Kingdom
Timothy Garton Ash
(The author was with the strikers in the Lenin Shipyard in...)
The author was with the strikers in the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk. He witnessed the defiance of the workers and the emergence of an improbable leader and hero in Lech Walesa. This book, therefore, acts as an eyewitness account of the occurances cited but also it provides an analysis of the powers ranged against Solidarity and of their pyrrhic victory. The author describes Solidarity's long underground struggle, its triumphant return in 1989 and the ironies of its subsequent disintegration.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684181142/?tag=2022091-20
1984
(Essays depict the culture and politics of Central Europe ...)
Essays depict the culture and politics of Central Europe and view the social change taking place within the socialist system.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0394575733/?tag=2022091-20
1989
(The author was present in four countries - Poland, Hungar...)
The author was present in four countries - Poland, Hungary, East Germany and Czechoslovakia - at cardinal moments in their emancipation during 1989 and describes the events.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140140239/?tag=2022091-20
1989
(For forty-five years Europe was divided, and at the cente...)
For forty-five years Europe was divided, and at the center of that divided continent lay a divided Germany. In this brilliantly nuanced book, one of our most respected authorities on Central Europe tells the story of German reunification. Garton Ash has produced a panoramic, dramatic, and definitive account of events that are continuing to transform the map of Europe.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679755578/?tag=2022091-20
1994
("Eloquent, aware and scrupulous a rich and instructive ex...)
"Eloquent, aware and scrupulous a rich and instructive examination of the Cold War past." - The New York Times. In 1978 a romantic young Englishman took up residence in Berlin to see what that divided city could teach him about tyranny and freedom. Fifteen years later Timothy Garton Ash - who was by then famous for his reportage of the downfall of communism in Central Europe - returned.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679777857/?tag=2022091-20
1998
(The Magic Lantern is one of those rare books that define ...)
The Magic Lantern is one of those rare books that define a historic moment, written by a brilliant witness who was also a participant in epochal events. Whether covering Poland’s first free parliamentary elections - in which Solidarity found itself in the position of trying to limit the scope of its victory - or sitting in at the meetings of an unlikely coalition of bohemian intellectuals and Catholic clerics orchestrating the liberation of Czechoslovakia, Garton Ash writes with enormous sympathy and power.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679740481/?tag=2022091-20
1999
(The 1990s. An extraordinary decade in Europe. At its begi...)
The 1990s. An extraordinary decade in Europe. At its beginning, the old order collapsed along with the Berlin Wall. Everything seemed possible. Everyone hailed a brave new Europe. But no one knew what this new Europe would look like. Now we know. Most of Western Europe has launched into the unprecedented gamble of monetary union, though Britain stands aside. Germany, peacefully united, with its capital in Berlin, is again the most powerful country in Europe. The Central Europeans - Poles, Czechs, Hungarians - have made successful transitions from communism to capitalism and have joined NATO. But farther east and south, in the territories of the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia, the continent has descended into a bloody swamp of poverty, corruption, criminality, war, and bestial atrocities such as we never thought would be seen again in Europe.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375727620/?tag=2022091-20
2001
(“We, the free, face a daunting opportunity. Previous gene...)
“We, the free, face a daunting opportunity. Previous generations could only dream of a free world. Now we can begin to make it.” In his welcome alternative to the rampant pessimism about Euro-American relations, award-winning historian Timothy Garton Ash shares an inspiring vision for how the United States and Europe can collaborate to promote a free world. At the start of the twenty-first century, the West has plunged into crisis. Europe tries to define itself in opposition to America, and America increasingly regards Europe as troublesome and irrelevant. What is to become of what we used to call “the free world”? Part history, part manifesto, Free World offers both a scintillating assessment of our current geopolitical quandary and a vitally important argument for the future of liberty and the shared values of the West. From the Trade Paperback edition.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FCKKPI/?tag=2022091-20
2004
(Timothy Garton Ash is well known as an astute and penetra...)
Timothy Garton Ash is well known as an astute and penetrating observer of a dazzling array of subjects, not least through his many contributions to the New York Review of Books. This collection of his essays from the last decade reveals his knack for ferreting out exceptional insights into a troubled world, often on the basis of firsthand experience.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300177550/?tag=2022091-20
2011
Timothy Garton Ash was born on July 12, 1955, in London, United Kingdom to the family of John Garton Ash and Lorna Judith Freke. His older brother Christopher is a Church of England clergyman.
Garton Ash was educated at St Edmund's School, Hindhead, Surrey, before going on to Sherborne School, a well-known public school in Dorset in South West England. He holds a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in modern history from the University of Oxford, did graduate studies at St. Antony's College, Oxford, at the Free University in West Berlin, and at Humboldt University in East Berlin.
In 1986-1987 Timothy Garton Ash was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. Since 1990, he has been a Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford, where he directed the European Studies Centre from 2001 to 2006 and is now Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow. He became a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, in 2000. A frequent lecturer, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Arts and a Corresponding Fellow of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. He has written a weekly column in The Guardian since 2004 and is a long-time contributor to the New York Review of Books. His column is also translated in the Turkish daily Radikal and in the Spanish daily El País, as well as other papers. He also contributes to the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
Among the topics Garton Ash has covered are the liberation of Central Europe from communism, Germany before and after its reunification, how countries deal with a difficult past, and the European Union’s relationships with partners including the United States and rising non-Western powers such as China. His current research focuses on global free speech in the age of the Internet and mass migration.
Garton Ash continues to travel extensively and remains a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and other journals.
(Timothy Garton Ash is well known as an astute and penetra...)
2011(The author was present in four countries - Poland, Hungar...)
1989(The Magic Lantern is one of those rare books that define ...)
1999(Essays depict the culture and politics of Central Europe ...)
1989(For forty-five years Europe was divided, and at the cente...)
1994("Eloquent, aware and scrupulous a rich and instructive ex...)
1998(The author was with the strikers in the Lenin Shipyard in...)
1984(“We, the free, face a daunting opportunity. Previous gene...)
2004(The 1990s. An extraordinary decade in Europe. At its begi...)
2001Garton Ash describes himself as a liberal internationalist. 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 super-power and Angela Merkel's leadership of Germany. Garton Ash opposed Scottish independence and argued for Britishness.
Garton Ash is a strong advocate of free speech and human rights.
Quotations:
"Sustainability may be a grey and boring word, but it is the biggest single challenge to global capitalism today. The genius of contemporary capitalism is not simply that it gives consumers what they want, but it makes them want what it has to give."
On the 2003 invasion of Iraq: "Never in the field of human conflict was so little achieved by so great a country at such vast expense."
"I love Europe. Not in the sense that I love England, although on a rainy day Europe runs it close. But there is a meaningful sense in which I can say I love Europe - in other words, that I am a European patriot."
"The process may take decades, but one day Islamism, too, will join the gods that failed."
"Let me immediately put my cards on the table, and tell you where I stand on this question of Brexit. I said the day after the referendum that the best day of my political life was the 9th of November 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall. And the worst day of my political life was the 23rd of June 2016 (Brexit vote)."
"Except for its worst inner-city slums, America is not the primitive capitalist jungle of European imagination, where human beings slink away like wounded animals to die in bloodstained holes."
Timothy Garton Ash is fluent in German, Polish and French.
Timothy Garton Ash and his wife Danuta live mainly in Oxford, though also in Stanford and airplanes. They have two sons, Thomas and Alec.