Homelands
A Personal History of Europe
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Homelands
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Narrated by:
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John Sackville
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
Homelands is a stunning blend of contemporary history, reportage and memoir by our greatest writer about European affairs.
Drawing on half a century of interviews and experience, Homelands tells the story of Europe in the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries - how, having emerged from its wartime hell in 1945, 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.
Humane, expert and deeply felt, Homelands is full of encounters, conversations and anecdotes. It is also highly personal: Timothy Garton Ash has spent a lifetime studying and thinking about Europe and this audiobook is full of life itself, from his father's experience on D-Day, to his teenage French exchange, to interviewing Polish dockers, Albanian guerrillas and angry teenagers in the poorest quarters of Paris, as well as advising prime ministers, chancellors and presidents in the UK, Europe, and the US.
Homelands is both a singular history of a period of unprecedented progress and a clear-eyed account of how so much then went wrong, all the way from the financial crisis of 2008 to the war in Ukraine. It culminates in an urgent call to the citizens of this great old continent to understand and defend what we have collectively achieved.
©2023 Timothy Garton Ash (P)2023 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
What listeners say about Homelands
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Justin Bergman
- 18-12-23
Wonderful overview of Europe in the last century up to the present day
Great book, but the pronunciation of French and German of the narrator is quite appalling
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 20-01-25
A love letter to Europe
With a horrible pronunciation of any European language other than English. Shame, really, since the author is a polyglot himself, unlike the voice actor
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- veyza
- 19-05-23
This European Life
An eyewitness to history who can ably answer the question - What was that all about?
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Karli_Karla
- 20-06-24
Great content, butchered pronunciation!
As a Pole, I join other readers in asking for the person doing the voice over their homework and learning how to pronounce non-English names. Content - fantastic! Chapeau bas.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Marta Gajewska
- 10-03-23
wonderful book, but pronunciations need fixing!
a wonderful book and I loved it, but please learn to pronounce Slavic names correctly... the publisher should do better!
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- NADYA D
- 27-08-24
strongly recommend
a very good book, interesting, personal about historical events, must read especially nowadays when there is war in Europe and the future is vague
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- exile71
- 05-03-24
Personal reflection resonated
Timothy Garton Ash’s personal reflections got me hooked in to the first part of the book. As languages student with a fascination for the exoticism of “Europe” I could really relate to the author. The chapters are themed in a way that leads you through the key defining moments of recent European history in a fairly chronological way which works well. I found some of the later chapters a little more depressing as we entered very recent history covering migration, Brexit and the rise of populism but overall a very informative and relatable listen for anyone interested in modern European history.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Lady Gisborne
- 20-03-24
Makes you well up at regular intervals…
What a book!
As per blurb, this is a very personal history, starting with TGA’s travels to France as a kid, then his escapades as a young man and finally as a political writer.
The stories of conversations with famous people like Czechia’s Havel or Poland’s Geremek are fascinating. It makes you feel jealous of his experience.
It also , in hindsight, makes you impressed with his good judgment.
He’s forgiving of flaws and very mature in his recollections, in this way I’m glad we are reading these stories now rather than earlier on.
I loved all these little vistas, the children’s book from Srebrenica, the small piece of the Berlin Wall.
One annoyance is the pronunciation of anything foreign by the lector. I wish someone had edited out the mispronounced “Vaklaff” Havel, Solidarnosk, Srebrenika, and others, of which there were many. Unfortunately this was not an odd word here and there, these are people and things/ places from our living memory and this book is peppered with them.
Overall though, what a beautiful and interesting book.
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