American journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum has held many posts including Warsaw correspondent for The Economist, foreign editor and deputy editor of the Spectator magazine and political editor of the Evening Standard. She now writes a column for The Washington Post and is author of Gulag: A History and most recently Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56.

In Iron Curtain Applebaum documents a brutal period in European history and reflects on how fragile free societies are. Exploring how, in the decade after the end of the Second World War, Communism was imposed on previously free societies; how political parties, the church, the media – the institutions of civil society on every level – were all quickly destroyed.

Anne Applebaum will be joining us at the Frontline Club in conversation with author, journalist and columnist for The Times, Oliver Kamm to talk about the journey taken in her new book and the lessons that can be learned from that brutal period in history.

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