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Timothy Garton Ash
Timothy Garton Ash CMG FRSA FRHistS FRSL (born 12 July 1955) is a British historian, author and commentator. He is Professor of European Studies emeritus at the University of Oxford and a Senior Fellow of Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Most of his work has been concerned with the contemporary history of Europe, with a special focus on Central and Eastern Europe. In 1989, George Kennan described him as a 'historian of the present'.
He has written about the former 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 also examined the role of Europe in the world and the challenge of combining political freedom and diversity, especially in relation to free speech.
Garton Ash was born to John and Lorna Garton Ash. His father was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge and was a decorated Royal Artillery officer in the British Army during the Second World War.
Garton Ash was educated at St Edmund's School, Hindhead, Sherborne School, Dorset and Exeter College, Oxford, where he studied Modern History.
For postgraduate study he went to St Antony's College, Oxford, and then, in the still divided Berlin, to the Free University in West Berlin on a German Academic Exchange Service scholarship in 1978 and to the Humboldt University in East Berlin in 1980 as the first GDR–UK exchange student. In West Berlin, he shared a flat with James Fenton. He abandoned his Oxford DPhil on Berlin during the Nazi rule to write about the German Democratic Republic. During his studies in East Berlin, he was under surveillance from the Stasi, which served as the basis for his 1997 book The File. Garton Ash cut a suspect figure to the Stasi, who regarded him as a "bourgeois-liberal" and potential British spy. Although he denies being or having been a British intelligence operative, Garton Ash described himself as a "soldier behind enemy lines" and described the German Democratic Republic as a "very nasty regime indeed".
In the 1980s Garton Ash was Foreign Editor of The Spectator, editorial writer on Germany and Central Europe for The Times and a columnist for The Independent. He was among the first Western journalists to report from the Lenin Shipyard strike in Gdańsk, Poland in August 1980 that led to the Gdańsk Agreement, and met with Lech Wałęsa there. In January 1981, he covered the Rural Solidarity strike in Rzeszów and Ustrzyki Dolne, which resulted in the Rzeszów–Ustrzyki Agreement, and attended the National Coordinating Commission's internal discussions featuring Wałęsa. He interviewed Polish opposition leaders Bronisław Geremek, Jerzy Turowicz, Bohdan Cywiński, Jan Kielanowski and Jerzy Milewski, as well as the Deputy Minister of Agriculture Zdzisław Grochowski. Eventually expelled from the country, he also visited the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, the Hungarian People's Republic, the People's Socialist Republic of Albania and the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina at key moments of their late history. In 1986/1987, he was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. In his much-quoted essay "Does Central Europe Exist?" of 1986, he welcomed the resurgence of the former German notion of Central Europe as an anti-Soviet regional identity among the dissidents in Prague and Budapest. He was present at Viktor Orbán's speech on 16 June 1989 in the Heroes' Square in Budapest, and at the Fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. In March 1990, he was summoned by the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as an authority on Germany and one of "her favourite British historians" alongside Norman Stone and Hugh Trevor-Roper to answer her concerns about German reunification during a confidential seminar at Chequers that was later leaked out to the press.
He became a Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, in 1989, a Senior Fellow of Stanford University's Hoover Institution in 2000, and Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford in 2004. He directed the European Studies Centre at St Antony's College, Oxford, from 2000 to 2006,
He subsequently founded the Dahrendorf Programme at the European Studies Centre, and directed it from 2010 to 2024. He now chairs its Academic Steering Committee.
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Timothy Garton Ash
Timothy Garton Ash CMG FRSA FRHistS FRSL (born 12 July 1955) is a British historian, author and commentator. He is Professor of European Studies emeritus at the University of Oxford and a Senior Fellow of Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Most of his work has been concerned with the contemporary history of Europe, with a special focus on Central and Eastern Europe. In 1989, George Kennan described him as a 'historian of the present'.
He has written about the former 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 also examined the role of Europe in the world and the challenge of combining political freedom and diversity, especially in relation to free speech.
Garton Ash was born to John and Lorna Garton Ash. His father was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge and was a decorated Royal Artillery officer in the British Army during the Second World War.
Garton Ash was educated at St Edmund's School, Hindhead, Sherborne School, Dorset and Exeter College, Oxford, where he studied Modern History.
For postgraduate study he went to St Antony's College, Oxford, and then, in the still divided Berlin, to the Free University in West Berlin on a German Academic Exchange Service scholarship in 1978 and to the Humboldt University in East Berlin in 1980 as the first GDR–UK exchange student. In West Berlin, he shared a flat with James Fenton. He abandoned his Oxford DPhil on Berlin during the Nazi rule to write about the German Democratic Republic. During his studies in East Berlin, he was under surveillance from the Stasi, which served as the basis for his 1997 book The File. Garton Ash cut a suspect figure to the Stasi, who regarded him as a "bourgeois-liberal" and potential British spy. Although he denies being or having been a British intelligence operative, Garton Ash described himself as a "soldier behind enemy lines" and described the German Democratic Republic as a "very nasty regime indeed".
In the 1980s Garton Ash was Foreign Editor of The Spectator, editorial writer on Germany and Central Europe for The Times and a columnist for The Independent. He was among the first Western journalists to report from the Lenin Shipyard strike in Gdańsk, Poland in August 1980 that led to the Gdańsk Agreement, and met with Lech Wałęsa there. In January 1981, he covered the Rural Solidarity strike in Rzeszów and Ustrzyki Dolne, which resulted in the Rzeszów–Ustrzyki Agreement, and attended the National Coordinating Commission's internal discussions featuring Wałęsa. He interviewed Polish opposition leaders Bronisław Geremek, Jerzy Turowicz, Bohdan Cywiński, Jan Kielanowski and Jerzy Milewski, as well as the Deputy Minister of Agriculture Zdzisław Grochowski. Eventually expelled from the country, he also visited the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, the Hungarian People's Republic, the People's Socialist Republic of Albania and the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina at key moments of their late history. In 1986/1987, he was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. In his much-quoted essay "Does Central Europe Exist?" of 1986, he welcomed the resurgence of the former German notion of Central Europe as an anti-Soviet regional identity among the dissidents in Prague and Budapest. He was present at Viktor Orbán's speech on 16 June 1989 in the Heroes' Square in Budapest, and at the Fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. In March 1990, he was summoned by the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as an authority on Germany and one of "her favourite British historians" alongside Norman Stone and Hugh Trevor-Roper to answer her concerns about German reunification during a confidential seminar at Chequers that was later leaked out to the press.
He became a Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, in 1989, a Senior Fellow of Stanford University's Hoover Institution in 2000, and Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford in 2004. He directed the European Studies Centre at St Antony's College, Oxford, from 2000 to 2006,
He subsequently founded the Dahrendorf Programme at the European Studies Centre, and directed it from 2010 to 2024. He now chairs its Academic Steering Committee.
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