Tim Judah

Tim Judah (born 31 March 1962) is a British writer, reporter and political analyst for The Economist. Judah has written several books on the geopolitics of the Balkans, mainly focusing on Serbia and Kosovo.

Early life[edit]

Tim Judah was born in London in 1962 and was raised in a family of Baghdadi Jewish descent whose tradition maintains they first came to Iraq from the ancient Kingdom of Judah at the time of the Babylonian Exile.^[1] His ancestors include Solomon Ma’tuk.^[2]

The Judah family was later established in Calcutta as part of the Baghdadi Jewish community before migrating to Britain.^[3][4][5][6]

Judah attended Charterhouse school followed by the London School of Economics.^[7] He also studied at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.^[8]

Based abroad as a foreign correspondent, Judah lived in Bucharest from 1990 to 1991 where he covered the fall of communism for The Times and The Economist.^[9] He was based in Belgrade to cover the conflicts surrounding the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.^[10] He returned to London in 1995 but continues to travel frequently to the Balkans.^[11]

Judah is married to writer and publisher Rosie Whitehouse and has five children, one of whom is the journalist Ben Judah.^[12]

Reporting[edit]

Tim Judah began his career at the African service of the BBC World Service.^[13]

He has reported from many flashpoints around the world, including the states of the former Yugoslavia, El Salvador, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Niger, Darfur, Uganda, North Korea, Georgia, Armenia, Haiti and Ukraine.^[14][15][16]

In 1997, based on his reporting of the Yugoslav Wars Judah criticized "academics imbued with a two dimensional view of the world" such as Francis Fukuyama for discussing the revolutions of 1989 as heralding the end of history.^[17]

Judah has been described by The Guardian newspaper as "a distinguished foreign correspondent."^[18][19] As a writer his style combines reportage, interviews and history and his main focus, as a journalist, has been on conflict in Africa and Eastern Europe, in particular the Balkans.^[20][21][22]

He has written three books on the Balkans region, including The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia published by Yale University Press in 1997 and Kosovo: War And Revenge with the same publisher in 2002.^[23] Regarding the Kosovo-Serbia question, Judah writes in his The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia in the section '"Kosovo: Land of Revenge" that the reincorporation of Kosovo to Serbia in 1944 was "the equivalent of reincorporating a cancer into the Serbian body politic".^[24]

He was an eyewitness to many of the battles of the Yugoslav Wars including the siege of Dubrovnik and the battle of Vukovar.^[25]

Judah is considered an authority on Balkan politics.^[26] As a senior visiting fellow at the European Institute of the London School of Economics in 2009, he developed the concept of the Yugosphere.^[27][28] He has described the Yugosphere as "a way of describing the renewal of thousands of broken bonds across the former state," a social and political phenomenon with a certain political application.^[29]

In the Balkans itself, he is president of the board of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network and a member of the board of the Kosovar Stability Initiative.^[30]

Elsewhere in Eastern Europe, Judah has reported on the Euromaidan Revolution and the War in Donbass. His most recent book In Wartime: Stories from Ukraine was published in December 2015.^[31]

Judah's work on Africa has included a BBC Radio 4 documentary on Mouridism.^[32] His work has also touched on African sporting achievements with his 2008 book Bikila: Ethiopia’s Barefoot Runner shortlisted for the best new sportswriter category in the 2009 British Sports Book Awards.^[33][34]

Judah has also worked in 2013 as a regular columnist for Bloomberg.^[35]

He has celebrated the Jewish festival of Passover in both Baghdad during the American invasion of 2003 and Donetsk during the Russian invasion of 2014.^[36][37]

Bibliography[edit]

• The Serbs: History, Myth, and the Destruction of Yugoslavia. Yale University Press. 2000. ISBN 978-0-300-08507-5.
• Kosovo: War and Revenge. Yale University Press. 2002. ISBN 978-0-300-09725-2.
• Bikila: Ethiopia's Barefoot Olympian. Reportage Press. 2008. ISBN 978-0-9558302-1-1.
• Kosovo: What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford University Press. 29 August 2008. ISBN 978-0-19-974103-8.
• In Wartime: Stories from Ukraine. Allen Lane / Penguin. 1 December 2015. ISBN 978-0241198827.

References[edit]

Articles[edit]

• Articles written for Prospect magazine
• Articles written for New York Review of Books

External links[edit]

• The Judah Edition Tim Judah’s website.
• BIRN (Balkan Investigative Reporting Network)
• The Economist
• European Stability Initiative
• Kosovar Stability Initiative