“There are hundreds of thousands of Scots who acknowledge English, Irish or Welsh parts of their very being. Lives and destinies are similarly intertwined in Catalonia and Spain, in Ukraine and Russia.”

Canadian author, academic and former politician, born 1947

Michael Grant Ignatieff is a Canadian author, academic, and former politician. Born in 1947, he served as leader of the Liberal Party and leader of the Opposition from 2008 to 2011. He is known first as a historian, and his academic career has included senior posts at Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, and the University of Toronto. More recently, he served as rector and president of Central European University from 2016 to 2021. His public life has moved between scholarship and politics, with writing and ideas at the center of both.