Author(s): Timothy Ash Garton

History | Politics & Current Affairs

'A moving love letter to Europe' - Lea Ypi, author of Free

Homelands is a stunning blend of contemporary history, investigative reporting and intimate 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, and this deeply felt book is full of vivid experiences: 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.

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