Charles Neal Ascherson (born 5 October 1932) is a Scotland journalist and writer. In his youth he fought for the British in the Malayan Emergency. He has been described by Radio Prague as "one of Britain's leading experts on central and eastern Europe".
Early life
Ascherson was born in
Edinburgh on 5 October 1932,
the son of a naval officer of Jewish ancestry and a mother from a London family of
Scottish people descent; his elder half-sister (by his father's first marriage) was the artist
Pamela Ascherson.
His aunt was the actress Renée Asherson.
Neal was awarded a scholarship to Eton College.
Military service
Before going to university, Ascherson did his National Service as an officer in the
Royal Marines, serving from July 1951
to September 1952.
During this time, he fought in the Malayan Emergency against pro-independence and communist guerrillas belonging to the Malayan National Liberation Army. During the Malayan Emergency he witnessed the racial oppression of the native people at the hands of British forces, and once claimed to have seen a communist guerrilla shot dead while vainly attempting to save another wounded communist during a gunfight. These experiences later pushed him towards anti-imperialist politics.
University education
Ascherson attended King's College, Cambridge, where he studied history.
The
Marxist historian
Eric Hobsbawm was his supervisor at Cambridge, and described Ascherson as "perhaps the most brilliant student I ever had. I didn't really teach him much, I just let him get on with it."
Career
After graduating Ascherson declined offers to pursue an academic career.
Instead, he chose a career in
journalism, first at
The Manchester Guardian and then at
The Scotsman (1959–60; 1975–79),
The Observer (1960–75; 1979–90) and
The Independent on Sunday (1990–98).
He contributed scripts for the documentary series
The World at War (1973–74) and the
Cold War (1998). He has also been a regular contributor to the
London Review of Books.
Ascherson has occasionally been actively involved in politics. In 1976, while working as the Scottish political correspondent for The Scotsman, he joined the newly-founded Scottish Labour Party (SLP), a breakaway faction which was led out of the UK Labour Party by the MP Jim Sillars following disagreements over the party's policy on Scottish devolution. Ascherson, like Sillars an enthusiastic supporter of maximalist 'Home Rule', provided much favourable coverage of the new party, but the SLP was riven by internal dissension and was wound up after the 1979 general election.[Jackson, Ben, The Case for Scottish Independence: A History of Nationalist Political Thought in Modern Scotland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), p. 101.][Drucker, H. M., Breakaway: The Scottish Labour Party (Edinburgh: EUSPB, 1978), pp. 104, 108.] Twenty years later, in the first election for the Scottish Parliament, he stood as the Liberal Democrat candidate in the West Renfrewshire constituency but was not successful.
Ascherson has also lectured and written extensively about Polish and Eastern Bloc affairs.
Awards and honours
In 1991 Ascherson was awarded an
honorary degree from the
Open University as Doctor of the University.
In 2011 he was elected Honorary Fellow
of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
Personal life
Neal Ascherson's first wife was journalist
Corinna Adam; the couple first met at Cambridge University and married in 1958. They had two daughters together before separating in 1974. The couple divorced in 1982.
[ (subscription required)] Corinna Ascherson, also a journalist, died in March 2012.
[Pavan Amara "Rhyl Street flat blaze victim, Corinna Ascherson, an idealistic socialist once one half of 'journalism's golden couple'" , Camden New Journal, 15 March 2012]
In 1984, Ascherson married his second wife, journalist Isabel Hilton.
Bibliography
External links
