Neal Ascherson

Neal Ascherson was the Observer’s Bonn correspondent between 1963 and 1966. His first novel, The Death of the Fronsac, will be reviewed here by Andrew O’Hagan.

In the LRB Archive:

• Diary: In Gdansk · 19 October 2017

• A Swap for Zanzibar: The Unusual History of Heligoland · 17 August 2017

  • Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea by Jan Rüger

• Into the Net: Records of the Spanish Civil War · 15 December 2016

  • Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39 by Adam Hochschild
  • ¡No Pasarán! Writings from the Spanish Civil War edited by Pete Ayrton
  • The Last Days of the Spanish Republic by Paul Preston
  • A Distant Heartbeat: A War, a Disappearance and a Family’s Secrets by Eunice Lipton

• England prepares to leave the world · 17 November 2016

• Where are we now? Responses to the Referendum · 14 July 2016

• Hopping in His Matchbox: Hitler as a Human · 2 June 2016

  • Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 by Volker Ullrich, translated by Jefferson Chase

• At the British Museum: Celts · 22 October 2015

• Brown Goo like Marmite: Memories of the Fog · 8 October 2015

  • London Fog: The Biography by Christine Corton

• On the Via Dolorosa: Remarque’s Fiction · 7 May 2015

  • The Promised Land by Erich Maria Remarque, translated by Michael Hofmann

• Germany’s Sense of Itself and the World’s Sense of Germany · 23 January 2015

• After the Referendum · 9 October 2014

• What sort of Scotland? · 21 August 2014

• A Plan and a Man: Remembering Malaya · 20 February 2014

  • Massacre in Malaya: Exposing Britain’s My Lai by Christopher Hale

• Little People Made Big: In Love with the Cause · 9 January 2014

  • Red Love: The Story of an East German Family by Maxim Leo, translated by Shaun Whiteside
  • The Jew Car by Franz Fühmann, translated by Isabel Fargo Cole

• He is English, after all: Unboreable Leigh Fermor · 7 November 2013

  • The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos by Patrick Leigh Fermor

• In Delville Wood · 7 November 2013

• Marseille, 1940-43 · 18 July 2013

• Hanging on to Mutti: In Berlin · 6 June 2013

• In High Stalinist Times: High Stalinist Times · 20 December 2012

  • Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1945-56 by Anne Applebaum

• A Gutter Subject: Joachim Fest · 25 October 2012

  • Not Me: Memoirs of a German Childhood by Joachim Fest, translated by Martin Chalmers

• How It Felt to Be There: Ryszard Kapuściński · 2 August 2012

  • Ryszard Kapuściński: A Life by Artur Domosławski, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

• After Seven Hundred Years: Ghosts of East Prussia · 24 May 2012

  • Forgotten Land: Journeys among the Ghosts of East Prussia by Max Egremont

• Memories of Amikejo · 22 March 2012

• Five Possible Ways to Kill a State: Vanished Kingdoms · 15 December 2011

  • Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe by Norman Davies

• The money’s still out there: The Scottish Empire · 6 October 2011

  • To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland’s Global Diaspora, 1750-2010 by T.M. Devine
  • The Inner Life of Empires: An 18th-Century History by Emma Rothschild

• Wolves in the Drawing Room: The SNP · 2 June 2011

• Just Like Cookham: Stanley Spencer in China · 19 May 2011

  • Passport to Peking: A Very British Mission to Mao’s China by Patrick Wright

• Make them go away: Grossman’s Failure · 3 February 2011

  • To the End of the Land by David Grossman, translated by Jessica Cohen

• Liquidator: Hugh Trevor-Roper · 19 August 2010

  • Hugh Trevor-Roper: The Biography by Adam Sisman

• At the Ashmolean: ‘The Lost World of Old Europe’ · 5 August 2010

• Raging towards Utopia: Koestler · 22 April 2010

  • Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual by Michael Scammell

• They’re just not ready: Gorbachev Betrayed · 7 January 2010

  • Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment by Stephen Kotkin, with Jan Gross
  • Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire by Victor Sebestyen
  • There Is No Freedom without Bread: 1989 and the Civil War that Brought Down Communism by Constantine Pleshakov
  • 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe by Mary Elise Sarotte

• Wedgism: Cold War Stories · 23 July 2009

  • Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain and International Communism 1945-50 by Marc Selverstone

• Such amateurishness …: The Sufferings of a Young Nazi · 30 April 2009

  • The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell, translated by Charlotte Mandell

• How Does It Add Up?: The Burns Cult · 12 March 2009

  • The Bard: Robert Burns, a Biography by Robert Crawford

• A Chance to Join the World: A Future for Abkhazia · 4 December 2008

• Fortune-Seekers: European Migration to AD 1000 · 23 October 2008

  • Europe between the Oceans: 9000 BC-AD 1000 by Barry Cunliffe

• Gazillions: Organised Crime · 3 July 2008

  • McMafia: Crime without Frontiers by Misha Glenny

• Cape of Mad Hope: the Darien disaster · 3 January 2008

  • The Price of Scotland: Darien, Union and the Wealth of Nations by Douglas Watt

• Diary: among the icebergs · 18 October 2007

• The Media Did It: remembering the Wall · 21 June 2007

  • The Berlin Wall: 13 August 1961 – 9 November 1989 by Frederick Taylor

• Diary: Scotophobia · 5 April 2007

• Even Now: The Silence of Günter Grass · 2 November 2006

  • Beim Häuten der Zwiebel by Günter Grass

• End-Point: Imre Kertész · 3 August 2006

  • Fateless by Imre Kertész, translated by Tim Wilkinson
  • Liquidation by Imre Kertész, translated by Tim Wilkinson

• Imagined Soil: The German War on Nature · 6 April 2006

  • The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape and the Making of Modern Germany by David Blackbourn

• The Atlantic Gap: Europe since the War · 17 November 2005

  • Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 by Tony Judt

• Lust for Leaks: The Cockburns of Cork · 1 September 2005

  • The Broken Boy by Patrick Cockburn

• Is this to be the story? · 6 January 2005

• Victory in Defeat: Trotsky · 2 December 2004

  • The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879-21 by Isaac Deutscher
  • The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky 1921-29 by Isaac Deutscher
  • The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky 1929-40 by Isaac Deutscher

• Law v. Order: Putin’s strategy · 20 May 2004

  • Inside Putin's Russia by Andrew Jack
  • Putin's Progress by Peter Truscott
  • Putin, Russia's Choice by Richard Sakwa

• After the Revolution: In Georgia · 4 March 2004

• Oo, Oo!: Khrushchev the Stalinist · 21 August 2003

  • Khrushchev: The Man and His Era by William Taubman

• Hitler’s Teeth: Berlin 1945 · 28 November 2002

  • Berlin: The Downfall, 1945 by Antony Beevor

• The crocodiles gathered: Patrice Lumumba · 4 October 2001

  • The Assassination of Lumumba by Ludo De Witte, translated by Ann Wright and Renée Fenby

• Reflections on International Space · 24 May 2001

• Baleful Smile of the Crocodile: D.S. Mirsky · 8 March 2001

  • D.S. Mirsky: A Russian-English Life 1890-1939 by G.S Smith

• On with the Pooling and Merging: The Incomparable Tom Nairn · 17 February 2000

  • After Britain: New Labour and the Return of Scotland by Tom Nairn

• Khrushchev’s Secret · 16 October 1997

  • We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History by John Lewis Gaddis

• In the Hands of the Cannibals · 20 February 1997

  • Europe: A History by Norman Davies

• Fellow-Travelling · 8 February 1996

  • The Collected Works of John Reed

• Revolutionary Chic · 5 November 1992

  • Chamfort: A Biography by Claude Arnaud, translated by Deke Dusinberre

• Up against the wall · 25 June 1992

  • My Life in Politics by Willy Brandt

• Bring on the hypnotist · 12 March 1992

  • After the Fall: The Failure of Communism and the Future of Socialism edited by Robin Blackburn

• Heartlessness · 19 December 1991

  • Judge on Trial by Ivan Klima, translated by A.G. Brain

• Down Dalston Lane · 27 June 1991

  • A Journey through Ruins: The Last Days of London by Patrick Wright

• Where will this voyage end? · 14 June 1990

  • Echoes of the Marseillaise: Two centuries look back on the French Revolution by E.J. Hobsbawm

• Who would have thought it? · 8 March 1990

  • The Uses of Adversity by Timothy Garton Ash

• Nairn is best · 21 May 1987

  • Nairn: In Darkness and Light by David Thomson

• Citizen Grass and the World’s End · 17 October 1985

  • On Writing and Politics: 1967-1983 by Günter Grass, translated by Ralph Manheim
  • Günter Grass by Ronald Hayman

• Newspapers of the Consensus · 21 February 1985

  • The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain. Vol. II: The 20th Century by Stephen Koss
  • Lies, Damned Lies and Some Exclusives by Henry Porter
  • Garvin of the ‘Observer’ by David Ayerst
  • The Beaverbrook I Knew edited by Logan Gourlay

• Boswell’s Bowels · 20 December 1984

  • James Boswell: The Later Years 1769-1795 by Frank Brady

• Rumba, Conga, Communism · 4 October 1984

  • Family Portrait with Fidel by Carlos Franqui, translated by Alfred MacAdam
  • Infante’s Inferno by G. Cabrera Infante, translated by Suzanne Levine

• Last Leader · 7 June 1984

  • Citizen Ken by John Carvel

• Dance of the Vampires · 19 January 1984

  • Roman by Roman Polanski

• Cross Words · 17 November 1983

  • The Story of the ‘Times’ by Oliver Woods and James Bishop
  • Good Times, Bad Times by Harold Evans

• Cushy Numbers · 3 November 1983

  • French and Germans, Germans and French: A Personal Interpretation of France under Two Occupations, 1914-1918/1940-1944 by Richard Cobb
  • Still Life: Scenes from a Tunbridge Wells Childhood by Richard Cobb

• Diary · 2 June 1983

• Believing in gringos · 19 May 1983

  • Salvador by Joan Didion

• Hard Men · 5 May 1983

  • Contact by A.F.N. Clarke

• Going Straight · 17 March 1983

  • After Long Silence by Michael Straight
  • A Matter of Trust: MI5 1945-72 by Nigel West

• By San Carlos Water · 18 November 1982

  • Authors take sides on the Falklands edited by Cecil Woolf and Jean Moorcroft Wilson
  • The Falklands War: The Full Story by the Sunday Times ‘Insight’ Team
  • The Winter War: The Falklands by Patrick Bishop and John Witherow
  • Iron Britannia: Why Parliament waged its Falklands war by Anthony Barnett
  • Falklands/Malvinas: Whose Crisis? by Martin Honeywell
  • Los Chicos de la Guerra by Daniel Kon
  • A Message from the Falklands: The Life and Gallant Death of David Tinker, Lieut RN compiled by Hugh Tinker

• Conservatives · 6 November 1980

  • The Meaning of Conservatism by Roger Scruton
  • Counting Our Blessings by Daniel Patrick Moynihan
  • Peregrinations by Peregrine Worsthorne

• Making history · 21 August 1980

  • The Oak and the Calf by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

• Red Souls · 22 May 1980

  • Russian Hide and Seek by Kingsley Amis

• Beyond Discussion · 3 April 1980

  • The Last Word: An Eye-Witness Account of the Thorpe Trial by Auberon Waugh

• What sort of traitors? · 7 February 1980

  • The Climate of Treason by Andrew Boyle

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