Description

**Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize 2024**
**A Financial Times Best Book of 2023**

‘A moving love letter to Europe’ Lea Ypi, author of Free

Drawing 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

‘Tremendously enjoyable … thoughtful, honest, open, self-deprecating’ Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

‘Readers could hardly wish for a wiser guide … defiantly hopeful’ Financial Times

Publisher Review

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 *