David Thomson: Movie Directors
Speakers: David Thomson, Francine Stock Over the last century our sense of what a director is or should be has shifted from a functionary to an important part of a wider team to the artist in charge. But now, which casual viewer could tell you who directed prestige TV shows like The Sopranos or Breaking […]
Boris Johnson: The Gambler
Speakers: Tom Bower, Matthew D’Ancona Hero or villain? Maverick or chancer? In his latest book Tom Bower, described by Tatler as “the master of the unauthorised biography”, takes on the current Prime Minister. Based on a wealth of new interviews and research, he asks what his real achievements and failures were as Mayor of London, […]
Around the World in 80 Plants
Speakers: Jonathan Drori After his bestselling Around the World in 80 Trees – and the accompanying full-house talk at Jewish Book Week 2020 – environmentalist Jonathan Drori returns, bringing to life the science of plants by revealing how their worlds are intricately entwined with our own history, culture and folklore. From the seemingly familiar tomato […]
Feline Philosophy
Speakers: John Gray, Marina Vaizey ‘When I play with my cat, how do I know she is not passing time with me rather than I with her?’ asked Montaigne back in the Renaissance. Present-day philosopher – and bestselling author of Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals – John Gray joins Marina Vaizey to […]
Survivors
Speakers: Rebecca Clifford, Rob Rinder, Angela Cohen, James Libson How can we make sense of our lives if we do not know where we come from? A question at the heart of both Survivors: Children’s Lives After the Holocaust, a beautifully written account of 100 Jewish children out of the ruins of conflict by Rebecca […]
George Steiner: A Celebration
Stephen Greenblatt described polymath and polyglot George Steiner as, ‘one of the great, restless wanderers of modern criticism… His astonishing intellectual career was a moving, emblematic refusal in the wake of Auschwitz to settle down to cultural business as usual’, while Lisa Jardine called him, ‘a rebel who made us aspire to being Europeans; he helped […]
The Disunited States
Speakers: Angelia Wilson, Nick Cohen, Lionel Shriver After the tumultuous tenure of Trump, what is next for America? After a year marked by the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests, the 2020 election saw the largest voter turnout since 1900 and resulted in the oldest president ever to take office, the first female, African-American and […]
The Ghetto
Speakers: Gary Younge, Edie Friedman, Bryan Cheyette Over the last 500 years the ghetto has accrued numerous contrasting and complex meanings; from the heart of Jewish culture in late medieval Western Europe and a more free-floating concept in the 19thcentury, to the Nazi definition and the ghettoization of African-Americans. Bryan Cheyette, author of The Ghetto: A […]
The Third Reich and the Paranoid Imagination
Speakers: Richard J. Evans, Trudy Gold “Brilliant … Deploying him against conspiracy theorists is a bit like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.” So says The Mail on Sunday of Richard J. Evans and the forensic scrutiny he subjects widely discussed claims involving Hitler and the Nazis to. In The Hitler Conspiracies the renowned historian analyses five long discredited but increasingly […]
Prince of the Press
Speakers: Joshua Teplitsky, Raquel Ukeles David Oppenheim, Prague’s chief rabbi from 1702 until his death in 1736, built an unparalleled collection of Jewish books and manuscripts, which survive to this day at the Bodleian Library. Containing works of law and literature, prayer and poetry, his library of over 7,000 printed works and 1,000 manuscripts testifies […]
How To Stay Sane: Elif Shafak
Speakers: Elif Shafak,Mark Lawson Award-winning novelist, TED speaker and activist Elif Shafak returns to Jewish Book Week with her concise and urgent call for conscious optimism in the age of division. After 10 Minutes 38 Seconds In This Strange World was shortlisted for both the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Booker Prize, she turns to non-fiction with this pocket-sized, […]
David Baddiel: Jews Don’t Count
Those who think themselves on the right side of history often ignore the history of antisemitism, argues David Baddiel in his highly anticipated unique combination of reasoning, polemic, personal experience and jokes. He outlines why and how, in a time of intensely heightened awareness of minorities, Jews don’t count as a real minority – and why they […]