The Passenger
Written in the wake of Kristallnacht in a frenzied four weeks, 23-year-old Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz’s unbearably suspenseful and disturbingly prophetic posthumous novel recounts the plight of German Jewish businessman Otto Silberman, fleeing his home in the wake of the pogrom as he races to escape this homeland that is no longer a home. Writers Eva […]
The Man From The Future
Smartphones; game theory; nanotechnology; nuclear weapons. All bear the fingerprints of one remarkable man: John von Neumann. Born into a Jewish family in culturally dazzling fin de siècle Budapest, von Neumann is one of the most influential scientists to have ever lived, reputed by his colleagues to have the fastest brain on the planet – […]
The Sassoons
Speakers: Joseph Sassoon, Sara Manasseh One of the great commercial dynasties of the 19th century, the Sassoons were as eminent as traders as the Rothschild were bankers: a handful of Jewish refugees exiled from Ottoman Baghdad who forged a mercantile juggernaut trading cotton and opium, whose vast network of agents, informants and politicians bridged East […]
The Father: A Revenge
Speakers: Franziska Frank, Philippe Sands Niklas Frank was just seven when his father Hans Frank, Hitler’s legal adviser and governor general of occupied Poland, was executed at Nuremberg as a Nazi war criminal. In the decades since he has attempted to come to terms with the enormity of the horror unleashed; The Father: A Revenge […]
The Lonely Century
Even before social distancing, loneliness was becoming the defining condition of the 21st century. But, argues academic and broadcaster Noreena Hertz, it is also one that we have the power to reverse. In her international bestseller The Lonely Century: A Call to Reconnect, she combines a decade of research with first-hand reporting, taking in smartphone […]
The Lost Café Schindler
Speakers: Meriel Schindler, Josh Spero Meriel Schindler spent most of her life dealing with her father Kurt, an often-impossible man who made extravagant claims about their family history. Were they really related to Franz Kafka, Oskar Schindler or Hitler’s Jewish physician Dr Bloch? And what really happened on Kristallnacht, the night that Nazis beat her […]
Sondheim Tonight
Speakers: Leslie Felperin, David Benedict, Jenna Russell, Nigel Lilley In music and conversation, we celebrate the life and work of one of the most influential cultural figures of the last 70 years, the Tony, Oscar, Grammy, Olivier and Pulitzer winning composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim. Born to a New York Jewish family in 1930, over […]
Michael Ignatieff: On Consolation
Speakers: Michael Ignatieff, David Herman How do we console each other and ourselves in an age of unbelief? In On Consolation: Finding Solace in Dark Times, author and academic Michael Ignatieff shows how humans in extremity have looked to each other to recover hope and resilience. From Job and Camus to Anna Akhmatova and Primo […]
Tree of Life: Elif Shafak, Jonathan Drori & Anne Sebba
From Islam’s Tree of Life to Tu BiShvat, trees play a central, often mystical, role in cultures and faiths around the world. Three of our favourite speakers take root here to discuss this unique relationship. The Island of Missing Trees, the latest acclaimed book from Elif Shafak, is a bittersweet tale of the star-crossed love […]
Marks & Gran
Speakers: Laurence Marks, Maurice Gran, Michael Grade From meeting at the Jewish Lads Brigade (Finsbury Park Company) in 1960 and making their comedy writing debut for Frankie Howerd in the 70s to their current status as BAFTA and Emmy winning elder statesmen of situation comedy, Laurence Marks & Maurice Gran have had a unique career. […]
Cherchez La Femme
Speakers: Lisa Appignanesi, Stephen Frosh, Eva Hoffman, John Launer, Rachel Lasserson Lisa Appignanesi, Stephen Frosh, Eva Hoffman and John Launer discuss how sex became a scandal, not only in the so-called “dangerous method”, psychoanalysis, but also beyond the consulting room. Early 20th century Europe was a cauldron of fertile ideas, Victorian repression, antisemitism and illicit […]
Spymaster: The Man Who Saved MI6
Speakers: Helen Fry, Robert Hutton Thomas Kendrick was central to the British Secret Service from its beginnings early last century through to the Second World War. Under the guise of a British Passport Officer he ran spy networks across Europe, facilitated the escape of Austrian Jews, and later went on to set up the M […]