Timothy Garton Ash

Timothy Garton Ash CMG FRSA (born 12 July 1955) is a British historian, author and commentator. He is Professor of European Studies at Oxford University. Much of his work has been concerned with the late modern and contemporary history of Central and Eastern Europe. He has written about the Communist regimes of that region, their experience with the secret police, the Revolutions of 1989 and the transformation of the former Eastern Bloc states into member states of the European Union. He has examined the role of Europe and the challenge of combining freedom and diversity, especially in relation to free speech.

Education

Garton Ash was educated at Sherborne School, a well-known public school in Dorset in South West England, followed by Exeter College, Oxford where he studied Modern History. For post-graduate 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.

Pavel Žáček, Timothy Garton Ash and Kristian Gerner (Tallinn, 2012)

Life and career

In the 1980s, Garton Ash was Foreign Editor of The Spectator and a columnist for The Independent. He became a Fellow at St Antony's College in 1989, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution in 2000, and Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford in 2004. 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.

Personal life

He and his wife Danuta live predominantly in Oxford, although also in Stanford. They have two sons.

Bibliography

• Facts are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade without a Name (Atlantic Books, 2009) ISBN 1-84887-089-2
• Free World: America, Europe, and the Surprising Future of the West (Random House, 2004) ISBN 1-4000-6219-5
• History of the Present: Essays, Sketches, and Dispatches from Europe in the 1990s (Allen Lane, 1999) ISBN 0-7139-9323-5
• The File: A Personal History (Random House, 1997) ISBN 0-679-45574-4
• In Europe's Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (Random House, 1993) ISBN 0-394-55711-5
• The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of 1989 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague (Random House, 1990) ISBN 0-394-58884-3
• The Uses of Adversity: Essays on the Fate of Central Europe (Random House, 1989) ISBN 0-394-57573-3
• The Polish Revolution: Solidarity, 1980–82 (Scribner, 1984) ISBN 0-684-18114-2
• Und willst du nicht mein Bruder sein ... Die DDR heute (Rowohlt, 1981) ISBN 3-499-33015-6

Awards and honours

• Somerset Maugham Award for The Polish Revolution: Solidarity (1984)
• Prix Européen de l'Essai Charles Veillon (1989)
• Premio Napoli, for journalism (1995)
• Order of Merit from the Czech Republic
• Order of Merit from Germany
• Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland
• Honorary doctorate from St Andrew's University, Scotland
• Hoffmann von Fallersleben Prize for political writing (2002)
• Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George
• George Orwell Prize for journalism (2006)
• Kullervo Killinen -prize from Finland (2006)
• Honorary doctorate from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts

See also

• European Council on Foreign Relations
• Appel de Blois
• Project Forum

External links

• Official Website
• Articles by Timothy Garton Ash at Journalisted
• Column archives at The Guardian
• Dahrendorf Programme for the Study of Freedom
• Free Speech Debate
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Works by or about Timothy Garton Ash in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Garton Ash on Facts Are Subversive
• In dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi
• Stanford public lecture