Timothy Garton Ash is professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford. A frequent lecturer, he is the Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St Antony's College, senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, as well as a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Society of Arts, and a corresponding fellow of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. His focus is on the late modern and contemporary history of Central and Eastern Europe. Ash is the author of nine books of political writing, or "history of the present," which have charted the transformation of Europe over the last 30 years. His essays appear regularly in the *New York Review of Books* and he writes a weekly column in *The Guardian*. He also contributes to *The New York Times*, *The Washington Post* and *The Wall Street Journal*. He was foreign editor of *The Spectator*, editorial writer on Central European affairs for the *London Times*, and a columnist on foreign affairs in the *Independent*. Ash has received honours for his writing, which include the David Watt Memorial Prize, and Commentator of the Year in the 'What the Papers Say.' In 2005, he was featured in a list of 100 top global public intellectuals chosen by the journals *Prospect* and *Foreign Policy*, and in *Time* magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people. In 2006, he was awarded the George Orwell Prize for political writing.