The Cut Out Girl
Bart van Es’s The Cut Out Girl, described by Philippe Sands as ‘luminous, elegant, haunting’, tells the true story of the author’s grandparents, and the young girl they fostered to hide her from the Nazis in occupied Holland. It is the winner of the 2018 Costa Book of the Year, and we are delighted to […]
Gleaning Whitechapel’s Yiddishe Histories
Speakers: Louis Berk, Vivi Lachs A stone wall or an iron gate reveal stories of community and schooling. An expression in a Cockney-Yiddish music-hall song or a union anthem from an 1889 tailors’ strike offer glimpses into a vibrant but conflicted world. Picking up clues and hints from photographs and Yiddish song lyrics, Louis Berk […]
Kafka’s Last Trial? Contested Literary Legacies & Cultural Property
Speakers: Benjamin Balint, Stefan Litt, Rebecca Abrams When Franz Kafka died in 1924, his loyal champion Max Brod could not bring himself to fulfil his friend’s last instruction: to burn his remaining manuscripts. Instead, Brod devoted the rest of his life to publishing and canonising Kafka’s work. That ‘betrayal’ of his friend’s last wish led […]
Opening The Drawer: The Hidden Identities of Polish Jews
Speakers: Barry Cohen, Witold Krassowski, Antony Polonski In Opening the Drawer: The Hidden Identities of Polish Jews, Barry Cohen has brought together illustrated profiles of three generations of Poles who discovered their hidden Jewish identity in surprising ways. Drawing on interviews with child survivors of the Holocaust, the post-war second generation and the post-Communist third […]
Philip Roth: His Life & Legacy
‘Literature isn’t a moral beauty contest’, claimed Roth, ‘The belief it inspires is what counts.’ Literary titan and multi-award winning writer, Philip Roth was undoubtedly a brilliant, if controversial, artist. In a career that spanned 50 years he wrote numerous, generation-changing books, from his first, Goodbye, Columbus, to his last, Nemesis. Three outstanding writers discuss […]
Saul Bellow: A Legacy
Speakers: David Herman, Zachary Leader Zachary Leader presents the second volume of The Life of Saul Bellow. Arguably the greatest of American writers, Bellow’s enduring appeal perhaps lies in his ‘gift for reading reality’. Leader’s exhilarating biography focuses not only on the unsurpassable writing, but on the tangled and numerous love affairs, the five wives, […]
The Book Smugglers
Speakers: David Fishman, James Libson In a history book that reads like a thriller, The Book Smugglers charts the incredible story of the ghetto inmates who rescued thousands of rare books and manuscripts — first from the Nazis and then from the Soviets — by hiding them on their bodies, burying them in bunkers, and smuggling […]
To Kill The Truth
Speakers: Jonathan Freedland, Matthew d’Ancona Acclaimed journalist Jonathan Freedland presents a gripping new thriller, the latest from his blockbuster novelist alter ego Sam Bourne. Somebody is murdering the world’s last remaining Holocaust survivors; libraries are burnt to the ground and important digital archives are wiped. Somebody is setting out to erase the past, even to destroy […]
Tom Bower on Jeremy Corbyn
Speakers: Tom Bower, Mark Lawson Acclaimed investigative journalist and bestselling biographer Tom Bower, author of 24 books including the lives of Robert Maxwell, Richard Branson, Tony Blair and Prince Charles, has penetrated the shadows and myths about Jeremy Corbyn and discusses his biography with Mark Lawson.
Voices on the Page
Speakers: Alba Arikha, Yvonne Green, Alex Clark Critically-acclaimed memoirist and author Alba Arikha joins poet and translator Yvonne Green in an exploration of how the literary voice represents the multiplicity of the Jewish experience. They tackle identity, nationhood, family and literary form in a wide-ranging discussion of the voices, people and ideas that are represented […]
A Weekend in New York
Speakers: Benjamin Markovits, Alex Clark Paul Essinger, a tennis professional in his 30s, is about to play his final US Open. The bookies give him 1,200-1 odds on winning the title. Anxiety-ridden, comically unaware and boiling with tension, each member of the Essinger family — Paul included — is painfully trying to unpick an idea of […]
Ben Hecht: The Greatest American Screenwriter
Ben Hecht was, according to Jean-Luc Godard, ‘a genius’ who ‘invented 80% of what is used in Hollywood movies today’. Besides producing dozens of now classic scripts — including Wuthering Heights, Gone With the Wind (for which he was never credited) and Notorious — Ben Hecht was also known as an ace reporter, celebrated playwright, taboo-busting novelist, […]