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 […]
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.
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 […]
Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: Addressing the Bundestag
In January 2018, cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a survivor of Auschwitz, and then of Bergen-Belsen, addressed the Bundestag to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day. In an extraordinary speech, she said, “Antisemitism is a virus which is two thousand years old and apparently incurable… No other genocide is as comprehensively documented as the Holocaust. And yet there are still […]
Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred
Speakers: David Triesman, Ruth Deech, Rod Liddle, Trudy Gold, Gavin Esler Judeophobia, the great hatred. Is it a psychic aberration, a 2,000 year-old disease? Loathing of Jews has been a feature of Christendom since the first accusation of deicide and this, combined with enforced employment patterns – usury and trade – made the Jews the […]
Descent into Darkness
Speakers: Marina Benjamin, Lisa Appignanesi, Amanda Craig In Insomnia, Marina Benjamin has produced an unsettling account of an unsettling condition, treating our inability to sleep not as a disorder, but as an existential experience that can electrify our understanding of ourselves, and of creativity and love. Lisa Appignanesi, in Everyday Madness, writes of the rage […]
Is Humanity in Denial?
Speakers: Jodie Ginsburg, Keith Kahn-Harris, Mark Levene, James Libson, Jane Haynes, Lucy Siegle The Holocaust never happened. The planet isn’t warming. Vaccines cause autism. All of us deny inconvenient truths sometimes, but what happens when denial becomes ‘denialism’, a systematic attempt to overturn established scholarly findings? And how do we relate to this phenomenon in […]
Seven Types of Atheism: To Believe or Not to Believe
For a generation, public debate has been corroded by a narrow derision of religion in the name of an often vaguely understood ‘science’. Bestselling author and eminent philosopher John Gray describes the rich, complex world of the atheist tradition. His book sheds an extraordinary and varied light on what it is to be human and […]
The Curious Case of Being Human
Speakers: Adam Rutherford, Rohan Silva We believe we are exceptional, but is there really anything special about humans that makes us different from other animals? In this entertaining tour of life on Earth, scientist and broadcaster Dr Adam Rutherford’s The Book of Humans: The Story of How We Became Us examines what, if anything, sets […]
The Age of the Demagogue
Speakers: Rana Mitter, Fawaz A. Gerges, Anne Applebaum, Anshel Pfeffer, Ian Robertson “Strongman politics are ascendant”, Barack Obama wrote recently: “The politics of fear and resentment… is now on the move”. From America to China, from Europe to Brazil, in India and across the Middle East, ‘macho’ leaders are very much in fashion. So why is […]
Survivor Café
Speakers: Elizabeth Rosner, Jane Haynes As first hand survivors of many of the twentieth century’s most monumental events—the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Killing Fields—begin to pass away, Survivor Café addresses urgent questions: How do we carry those stories forward? How do we collectively ensure that the horrors of the past are not forgotten? Examining current brain […]
Literary Friction
Speakers: Octavia Bright, Carrie Pitt,Yelena Moskovich Jewish Book Week hosts an edition of Literary Friction the monthly podcast about books and ideas, hosted by friends Carrie and Octavia. Listen-in for lively discussion, book recommendations and a little music too. Carrie and Octavia will be interviewing Ukranian-born, American and French artist and author Yelena Moskovich, speaking […]