Kabbalah Revealed: Through History & Fiction
Speakers: Harry Freedman, Ariel Kahn, George Prochnik Harry Freedman, author of the acclaimed The Talmud: A Biography, and novelist Ariel Kahn discuss and explore the meaning and relevance of the Kabbalah today with George Prochnik. In Scandal, Secrecy and the Soul: A History of Kabbalah, Harry tells the fascinating story of Kabbalah from its earliest […]
Murderous Maths
Speakers: Kjartan Poskett Join best-selling author and mathematician Kjartan Poskett to discover the fun side of numbers and shapes, including weird tricks and games you can’t lose, and introducing the people who really did put the murder into maths. Kjartan’s hilarious maths show has been described by the TES as a routine ‘that has children in […]
Agent Jack- Fighting The Nazis on British Soil
Speakers: Robert Hutton, Helen Fry June 1940: Britain is Hitler’ s next target. Some Britons are pro-Nazi, and they determine to do all they can to hasten Hitler’s arrival. Throughout WWII, Britain’s defence against the ‘enemy within’ was the unlikely figure of Eric Roberts, a former bank clerk turned MI5 agent. Codenamed Jack King, he […]
A Brave New World? Living in a Society Transformed by Technology
Speakers: Jamie Susskind, Jacob Turner, Hugo Rifkind Our world is undergoing a seismic transformation. Digital technologies – from artificial intelligence to blockchain, from robotics to virtual reality – are transforming the way we live together, and the future of politics. Artificial intelligence alone raises tremendous legal and ethical issues. In a world transformed by technology, […]
Doing Nothing
Speakers: Josh Cohen, Matthew Stadlen Oscar Wilde said that doing nothing is, ‘the most difficult thing in the world’. Today we live in a culture that demonises idleness, and the glorious art of doing nothing is disappearing. We are subject to a constant flow of information, and a permanent busyness pervades even our quietest moments. […]
What have The Plantagenets Ever Done for Us
Speakers: Nick Barratt, Claudia Gold, Nicholas Vincent, Dominic Selwood The 11th and 12th centuries, from William the Bastard’s conquest in 1066 to the death of Henry II in 1189, have been described as a golden age for Anglo-Jewry. For over a century they were protected as ‘the King’s Jews’, flourishing both intellectually and economically. Their […]
Under Cover: A Poet’s Life in Publishing
Speakers: Jeremy Robson, Maureen Lipman Acclaimed poet and publisher to the great and good, Jeremy Robson talks about his five decades in publishing, working with such intriguing and diverse figures as Marc Chagall, Ted Hughes (with whom he took a poetry tour of Israel), Joan Collins, Michael Winner, Muhammad Ali, Spike Milligan and Dannie Abse. […]
The Knock on the Door: Struggling Against Apartheid
In apartheid South Africa, many desperate parents fought to rescue their children, arrested for so-called ‘anti-apartheid’ activities, from the state’s clutches. Many of these children were tortured, some were murdered; some were as young as nine years old. The Knock on the Door tells the story of the parents who fought back, and of how […]
The Jewish World: The Remembered & Forgotten
Speakers: Daniel Walkowitz, Rebecca Taylor Heritage tourism has boomed in the last half century, especially in older industrial cities such as Kiev, Berlin, Bucharest, Krakow, London and New York. Jews, often rediscovering their family’s traumatic pasts marked by the Holocaust, have become a vital component of this burgeoning heritage industry. Daniel Walkowitz invites readers to […]
The Echo of a Noise: A One-Man Memoir on Stage
An evening with South Africa’s foremost satirist, the acclaimed Pieter-Dirk Uys, in his 7,000th solo performance that feels as fresh as his very first. Uys was – and still is – a voice in the wilderness, ever since he appeared fearlessly on stage in the 1970s. He jokes that the all-powerful censor board was his […]
Reckonings: Who Cares About Bringing Nazis to Justice
Speakers: Eli Rosenbaum, Philip Rubenstein, Mary Fulbook, Joshus Rozenberg Eli Rosenbaum of the US Justice Department has been described as ‘the world’s most successful Nazi hunter’. However, Professor Mary Fulbrook, in her new book, Reckonings, argues that the vast majority of Nazi perpetrators have evaded responsibility for their crimes. Seventy years after the Nuremberg Trials, […]
Angels: A Visible & Invisible History
Speakers: Peter Satnford, Julia Neuberger In a 2016 poll, one in ten Britons claimed to have experienced the presence of an angel, while one in three remain convinced that they have a guardian angel. Angels takes a modern look at what was once referred to as ‘angelology’, but which has its real roots in Judaism […]