Spies of No Country
Speakers: Matti Friedman, Jenni Frazer In 1948, with Israel’s existence hanging in the balance, four men, part of a ragtag unit known as the Arab Section, consisting of Jews native to the Arab world, went undercover in Beirut. Here, they spent the next two years operating out of a newsstand, collecting intelligence and sending messages […]
Vive La Résistance
Speakers: Fergus Butler-Gallie, Caroline Moorhead, Anne Sebba Wherever fascism has taken root, it has met with resistance. What drives people to such extraordinary courage? Fergus Butler-Gallie explores the lives of fifteen clergymen and women who fought fascism through acts of inventive heroism; whoever said that Christians had to be meek and mild hadn’t met Father […]
How to Fight Antisemitism
Speakers: Bari Weiss, Simon Schama, Julia Neuberger, Hugo Rifkind Antisemitism, says Bari Weiss, is ‘an ever-morphing conspiracy theory in which Jews play the starring role in spreading evil’; it is centre stage once more. It has existed for more than 2,000 years, the malignant prejudice that never dies. After the Holocaust there was a respite […]
The Wolf of Baghdad
“The belief is current among Baghdadi Jews that the wolf keeps away spirits and demons.” David Sassoon, scholar, 1917. Carol Isaac‘s graphic memoir of a lost homeland revisits the old Jewish Quarter of 1940s Baghdad, home to a third of the city’s population which witnessed the death or expulsion of almost its entire community of […]
What’s Next For Iran?
Speakers: Lawrence Freedman, Nazenin Ansari, Jack Straw, Sanam Vakil. In 1979, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown. His replacement, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared the birth of the Islamic republic of Iran. Today, ordinary Iranians live with an economy exhausted by sanctions and corruption, the media strictly controlled, and a hardline regime seeking to maintain its […]
The Language of Thieves
Speakers: Martin Puchner, Natasha Lehrer As a child The Written Word author Martin Puchner was told by his father about the secret code of Rotwelsch. A hybrid language associated with Jews and travellers, it blended Yiddish, Hebrew, Czech and other European languages, giving us expressions like ‘being in a pickle’. Unsettling many in power, no-one […]
Abram Games: His Wartime Work
Speakers: Naomi Games Captain Abram Games, holder of the unique title ‘Official War Poster Artist’, designed 100 posters for army use. In 1946 the War Office wrote of his work, ‘[it] was always effective, compelling, and of outstanding quality.’ His daughter Naomi Games tells the story of his wartime work.
A Thousand Small Sanities
Speakers: Adam Gopnik, Elif Shafak The journalist and New York Times-bestselling author Adam Gopnik offers a stirring defence of liberalism against the dogmatisms of our time. Taking us from Montaigne to Mill, and from Middlemarch to the civil rights movement, he shows us why liberalism is one of the great moral adventures in human history […]
The New Age of Ageing
Speakers: Camilla Cavendish, Nicci Gerrard, Harry Mount We are living in an unprecedented age: this year marks the first time in human history that the number of people aged 65 and over outnumber children aged five and under. It is a tumultuous demographic shift. How will we address the ensuing challenges? How will we ensure […]
The Library of Exile: Edmund de Waal
Speakers: Edmund de Waal Prize-winning author and artist Edmund de Waal talks about his library of exile. “This library celebrates the idea that all languages are diasporic, that we need other people’s words, self-definitions and re-definitions in translation.” Edmund de Waal Edmund’s library comprises more than 2,000 volumes in almost all the languages of the […]
The Heartless Traffic
Speakers: Jeremy Robson, Suzi Feay Jeremy Robson, described by The Times as ‘a champion of poetry’ selects the best of his poems from the early 1960s to his most recent collections, plus 50 new poems. A book about friendships with diverse figures from Ron Moody to Dannie Abse, of childhood haunts, Jewish roots, youthful passions […]
The Fashion Revolution: From Berlin to London
Speakers: Daniel Snowman, Michael Gee, Anna Nyburg, Uwe Westphal Nineteenth century Berlin was the creative centre for fashion and ready-to-wear clothing. Berlin’s clothing companies made modern apparel and developed new designs that were sold not only throughout Germany, but worldwide. But when Hitler came to power in 1933, the city’s mainly Jewish clothing industrialists were […]