The trouble with having a large tsundoku pile is that there is often a significant time lapse between buying a book and reading it. This has been compounded, in my case, by a lengthy period when my reading mojo had left the building. Books which were topical when I bought them are less so now but good writing and interesting subject matter still give books relevance.
An old history teacher, defending the superiority of History as a subject against popular interlopers, once said that Modern Studies was the study of what you read in the newspapers. It has taken me so long to get round to reading Timothy Garton Ash’s Facts Are Subversive: Political Writing From a Decade Without a Name, a collection of his writings from the first decade of this century, that it is no longer what is in the papers but can almost be considered history. It is a history that will, for the most part, be well remembered by readers who were adults of reaching adulthood about that time although there are less familiar topics of interest to the reader too.
Garton Ash is a historian but is also a perceptive observer of the present where he brings the historian’s analytical eye to the social, cultural, military and political issues that were important at the time of writing. There is also a geographical division to the topics which is primarily western but there is a section entitled ‘Beyond the West’ which looks at issues in Burma and Brazil among others less familiar to Western news consumers. Many of us will have opinion on terrorism, the EU (written well before Brexit), our supposed special relationship with the US, the Iraq war but not so many will have educated opinions on Burma under military dictatorship or the possibilities of reform in Iran. In this respect the book not only covers familiar ground with educated analysis but also provides a good starting point from which to delve into new or less familiar topics.
When I bought the book I remember being concerned that I didn’t know any of Garton Ash’s other writings. The blurb on the back of my edition stated, ‘For more than thirty years, Timothy Garton Ash has travelled among truth tellers and political charlatans…’ and I was unsure which he would turn out to be; a truth teller or a charlatan! He is, of course, neither but writes intelligently on a wide range of topics. Even if the reader disagrees with the Garton Ash’s observations it is always educational to read another point of view.
Significantly Different 