**Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize 2024****A Financial Times Best Book of 2023**''A moving love letter to Europe'' Lea Ypi, author of FreeDrawing from the people who lived it, Homelands explores how Europe slowly recovered and rebuilt from World War Two. And then faltered.Timothy Garton Ash, our greatest writer about Europe, has spent a lifetime studying Europe and this deeply felt book is full of vivid experiences: from his father''s memories of D-Day and his own surveillance at the hands of the Stasi to interviewing 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''Tremendously enjoyable ... thoughtful, honest, open, self-deprecating'' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times''Readers could hardly wish for a wiser guide ... defiantly hopeful'' Financial Times