Hello and welcome to the Rachman Review. I'm Gidea Rachman, Chief Foreign Affairs

commentator of the Financial Times. This week's podcast is about the future of Europe. My guest

is Timothy Gardner Ash, historian and author who began his career covering the fall of communism

in Europe in the late 1980s.

For many people, Gardner-Ash included, that was a period of hope and optimism.

But we're now living in a different Europe.

Russia is at war in Ukraine, the radical right is on the rise.

So can Europe still look forward to the future with optimism?

Mawahi!

Mawake!

Power hey!

Mawah!

Mawake! Mawake! Everybody who witnessed the fall of the Berlin War

knew that they were watching history in the making.

Timothy Garnash covered that period from East Germany

and he also watched the development of the solidarity movement

that unraveled

communist rule in Poland. He's written about all that and more in his recent book,

Homelands, A Personal History of Europe. But the inexorable spread of democracy and liberal

values across Europe, apparently heralded by the fall of the Berlin Wall, now seems to have slowed

and even gone into reverse. So when I met Timothy Garnash in London recently, I began our

conversation by asking him if he thinks that we are once again witnessing a new order emerging

...