Oliver Moody has been the Berlin bureau chief for The Times since 2018, covering Germany and northern and central Europe. The same year he was named science and data commentator and young commentator of the year at the UK Comment Awards. He co-presents The New Germany podcast for the Ko rber-Stiftung, with Katja Hoyer, and was journalist in residence at the WZB Berlin social science centre in 2024. He lives in Berlin with his wife and their two young children.
Moody has extensively travelled around the Baltic Sea and written a fascinating book on its changing politics in the shadow of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Baltic is essential reading for beginning to understand the present tumult in Europe as part of long European history -- Helen Thompson, author of DISORDER There are countries that take on Russia, and countries that don't. In this masterful account of political and societal resistance, Moody travels across Poland, the Baltics and the Nordics describing how this part of Europe understood Putin long before the rest. Mixing deep research with vivid reportage and a clear-sighted argument, this essential book is in turns alarming and uplifting -- John Kampfner, author of WHY THE GERMANS DO IT BETTER This is a brilliantly written book on an area about which many in Britain know little but they will now no longer have any excuse for remaining ignorant. Moody takes us through the entire Baltic sea littoral to show us how it is the frontline in the confrontation with Vladimir Putin and how it has much to teach us -- Brendan Simms, author of EUROPE: THE STRUGGLE FOR SUPREMACY This is a fascinating and original book examining the nine Baltic sea countries, looking at their troubled history and their current resurgence within Europe. Elegantly written and fizzing with fresh insights, this is an important and definitive study -- Frank McDonough, author of THE WEIMAR YEARS This timely and insightful book charts the self-confident rise and importance of the countries of the Baltic sea region and the need to listen to them as the focus of geopolitics shifts steadily eastwards. It analyses thoroughly the context of Russia's war upon the Ukraine, explains the central and increasing significance of hybrid ""grey zone"" forms of conflict and examines Russia's complex and dangerous motivations. Oliver Moody argues that the Baltic needs to be understood coherently in its own terms and not just as the eastern end of western Europe, and so shows the ways in which the ""West"" can win this decisive conflict -- Charles Clarke, former UK home secretary