Bill Browder: Surviving Putin
Can one man take on a ruthless global leader – and win? Financier Bill Browder was the largest foreign investor in Russia, but the Moscow jail murder of his lawyer after uncovering a $230 million fraud by government officials sparked a fight for justice that has made him number one both in the New York […]
The Escape Artist: Jonathan Freedland & Tracy Chevalier
“Awe inspiring, exciting and poignant, this is a thrilling read, a piece of redemptive storytelling and a work of important Holocaust historical research.” Simon Sebag Montefiore. In April 1944 teenager Rudolf Vrba and fellow inmate Fred Wetzler became two of the first Jews ever to break out of Auschwitz. Shortlisted for both the Baillie Gifford Prize […]
Joanna’s Story: Read by Janet Suzman
A three-year old child is found in Theresienstadt at the end of the war with no memory of her past, her only words ‘dog’ and ‘soup’. Brought to children’s homes in England with other survivors, she was adopted under a new name and identity; her past was erased. This is the story of how Joanna Millan reclaimed […]
Jewish Pride Amid Rising Hate
Why, after all this time, are we still talking about antisemitism? Can we instead embrace empowerment? In Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride educator Ben M. Freeman calls for a rejection of the shame of antisemitism imposed on Jews by the non-Jewish world and looks into the long history of internalised anti-Jewishness. In Everyday […]
The Life Fantastic
Western culture as you’ve never seen it before. In a series of mind-blowing essays, critic and broadcaster Noa Menhaim digs down to the roots of stories, myths and literary genres, travelling from art to politics to history to folklore, and from high to popular culture and back again. Through an intricate web of side notes, she embarks […]
The Most Dangerous Woman in Europe
Edda Mussolini was Benito’s favourite daughter: spoilt, clever, faithless, flamboyant, venal, a brilliant diplomat. Her father’s confidante during 20 years of Fascist rule she acted as first lady, helping steer Italy to join forces with Hitler, and with husband Galeazzo Ciano was part of Italy’s most celebrated couple. In a dramatic story that takes in […]
The Collaborators
A Hasidic Jew fixer, a Manchu princess and Himmler’s masseur; each regarded as both heroes and villains due to their wartime acts. Friedrich Weinreb took money from fellow Jews in a deportation-avoiding scam, but is known by supporters as ‘the Dutch Dreyfus’. Kawashima Yoshiko spied for the Japanese secret police in China. Felix Kersten became […]
Mizrahi and Sephardi Voices
Almost a million Jews fled their ancestral homelands following the founding of the State of Israel; Henry Green & Richard Stursberg trace their journeys in the wide-ranging yet intimate Sephardi Voices: The Untold Expulsion of Jews from Arab Lands. In The Wrong Kind of Jew: A Mizrahi Manifesto Hen Mazzig catalogues the Jewish population of the Middle East and North Africa, their history […]
Genesis Emerging Writers 2023
In the culmination of the second year of our programme in partnership with the Genesis Foundation – which offers bursaries, mentorship, peer support and seminars – the cohort share their experience and read from their fiction, non-fiction and poetry projects. They will be joined by mentors, who this year comprised Bidisha, Philip Hensher, Ashley Hickson-Lovence, Wayne Holloway-Smith, […]
Shylock: Merchant & Matriarch
Something special to close our 72nd festival: star of stage and screen Tracy-Ann Oberman performing excerpts from a radical new production of The Merchant of Venice alongside a panel discussion sparked by one of Shakespeare’s most controversial characters. Set in London’s East End in 1936, Ridley Road actor Tracy-Ann is playing Shylock as a widowed single mother and refugee from Russia, running […]
Philanthropy From Aristotle To Zuckerberg
The super-rich are shaping our world. Award-winning journalist Paul Vallely follows previous bestsellers Bad Samaritans & Pope Francis with Philanthropy. He takes us from the Greek man of honour, the Roman patron, the Jewish prophet and Christian scholastic to the Victorian moralist, the welfare socialist, the celebrity activist and today’s wealthy mega-giver. Exploring the successes, failures and contradictions of philanthrocapitalism, he asked tough questions of […]
Pressburger & Pearls
With A Matter of Life & Death, Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes, Pressburger and Powell changed the face of cinema. Emeric Pressburger also wrote two novels; The Glass Pearls, a post-war thriller about a mysterious German émigré, was reissued by Faber last year to acclaim. Here his grandson Kevin MacDonald, the Oscar-winning director of One Day in September and The Last King of […]