Neal Ascherson

Neal Ascherson was the Observer’s Central European correspondent in the 1960s, reporting from Bonn.

In the LRB Archive:

• Don’t imagine you’re smarter: The Informers · 19 July 2018

  • My Life as a Spy: Investigations in a Secret Police File by Katherine Verdery

• Howitzers on the Hill: ‘The Forty Days of Musa Dagh’ · 8 March 2018

  • The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel, translated by Geoffrey Dunlop, revised by James Reidel

• Big Man Walking: Gorbachev’s Dispensation · 14 December 2017

  • Gorbachev: His Life and Times by William Taubman

• 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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