A COMMENTATOR'S TAKE ON FREEDOM

NEAL ASCHERSON | September 4th 2008
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An expert on eastern Europe, Neal Ascherson mourns the delicious pleasure of smoking at the cinema in the afternoon ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, Autumn 2008

Intelligent Life asked 11 eminent people from different walks of life to look back over their adult lifetime and name the freedom we have gained and lost that means the most to them. They were free to take freedom in any sense, political or cultural, social or technological. What mattered was that it mattered to them.

THE COMMENTATOR: NEAL ASCHERSON

Aged 75, expert on eastern Europe, former
columnist on the Observer and the London Review of Books

FREEDOM LOST:

Can one regret a right which damaged other people’s rights—in this case, their right to health and clean air? I was never more than an occasional smoker. Yet I still miss the compound pleasure of going to a movie in the afternoon, putting my boots on the seat in front, and lighting up a fat black Gauloise. The smoke curling up to the cupola of the almost empty cinema. The total, concentrated anticipation. The feeling that “this is the life”. With that loss went a whole grubby sensual underworld: the extinct trick of telling where a stranger came from by the perfume of his cigarettes: Ekstra-Mocny from Poland, Nazionale, Roth-Händle (this guy’s a west German left-winger), Morava from Nis which was so much sweeter than Morava from Sarajevo...

FREEDOM GAINED:

The new right for which I am most grateful has to be visa-free travel. A right still limited to certain parts of the world. But the knowledge that, within a few hours of an impulse, I can be not just in a capital city (Prague, Warsaw, Berlin) but wandering down Piotrkowska Street in Lodz , or standing on the cobbles of an East Bohemian village inhaling its scent of pork chops and cabbage, or buying the real original Weihnachtsstollen at the Christmas Fair in Dresden—that’s still miraculous. Do I regret the long waits at frontier stations, the sound of jackboots slowly moving along the corridor from compartment to compartment? No, it’s all been perfectly preserved in novels. And if you still hanker for that paranoia kick, just put on a burqa for your return journey to Britain.

Up next: the freedoms missed and enjoyed by Charles Moore, former editor and columnist on the Daily Telegraph and official biographer of Margaret Thatcher.