Tony Judt

Tony Judt, the author of Postwar, a monumental history of Europe after World War II, and a public intellectual known for his sharply polemical essays on American foreign policy, the state of Israel and the future of Europe, died on Friday 6 August at his home in Manhattan.

The death was announced in a statement from New York University, where he had taught for many years. The cause was complications of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), which he learned he had in September 2008. In a matter of months the disease left him paralyzed and able to breathe only with mechanical assistance, but he continued to lecture and write.

Judt said a few months ago: "Today I'm regarded outside New York University as a looney-tunes leftie self-hating Jewish communist; inside the university I'm regarded as a typical old-fashioned white male liberal elitist. I like that. I'm on the edge of both, it makes me feel comfortable."

Last October, wrapped in a blanket and sitting in a wheelchair with a breathing device attached to his nose, Mr Judt spoke about social democracy before an audience of 700 at NYU. During the lecture, his last public appearance, he told the audience that some of his American friends felt that seeing him talk about ALS would be uplifting. But he added, "I'm English, and we don't do 'uplifting'..."

History remained uppermost in his mind. In his book Ill Fares the Land, he turned his attention to a problem he regarded as acute: the loss of faith in social democracy, and the power of the state to do good, that had brought prosperity to so many European countries after World War II.