Book review: Free Speech — Ten Principles for a Connected World by Timothy Garton Ash

THOUGH it has never held a less-than-prominent place in modern western thinking, the turbulent political and social events of the past few years, perhaps exemplified most clearly of all by the tragic and horrific attack on the Charlie Hebdo office, have moved the issue of Free Speech — and by extension, freedom of expression — to the very forefront of our consciousness.

It starts with language. Human speech, Timothy Garton Ash informs us from the outset, probably emerged at least 100,000 years ago. “By age three, an average child can use about 1,000 words... by age six, 13,000; and by age 18, some 60,000... the equivalent of a new word every 90 minutes of its waking life.” It is, he states, “a defining attribute of the human.”

Yet Free Speech covers a wider span than the mere limits of language. As the poet John Milton put it when appealing against censorship back in 1600s England, “What ever thing we hear or see, sitting, walking, travelling or conversing may be fitly call’d our book.”