Burn Mark: A Photographic Memoir of the Six Day War
Speakers: Avner Offer, Matti Friedman This extraordinary work, assembled in 1968 by Avner Offer – Oxford Professor of Economic History and a former soldier in the Six-Day War – is now published for the first time. Evoking the intimacy of a small unit in wartime, with its moral dilemmas and life and death experiences, the photographs bear witness to some […]
Dora’s Story
Speakers: Dora Reisser, Henry Goodman Dora’s Story is a tale of triumph over every possible adversity – a story of terror and hunger and persistence. Dora Reisser, who made her way from Sofia to Vienna to London to Hollywood, recounts her life story as a Bulgarian-born Nazi refugee, who rose to become the youngest solo […]
Feisty Fictions
Speakers: Linda Grant, Sarah Moss, Erica Wagner Linda’s Grant’s sparkling new novel, The Dark Circle, is set in 1950, two years into the NHS, revolving around a TB sanatorium in the Kent countryside, where the East End Lynsky twins are the only Jews. It has been described as ‘drenched in colour and light’; and is […]
Have I Got A Story For You…
Speakers: Liana Finck, Ezra Glinter, Boris Fishman The renowned émigré newspaper, The Forward, was founded in New York at the end of the 19th century. Liana Finck’s A Bintel Brief is written in an illustrative style that is a thrilling mash-up of Art Spiegelman’s deft emotionality, Roz Chast’s hilarious neuroses and the magical spirit of […]
Joyce and Svevo
Speakers: Stanley Price, Philip Hensher James Joyce and Italo Svevo met in Trieste in 1907 when Joyce was Svevo’s English teacher at the Berlitz School. Their friendship endured the political and cultural upheavals of the early 20th century and is explored in rich detail in this elegant new book by Stanley Price. Their story has […]
Midrash Unbound: Transformations and Innovations
Speakers: Joanna Weinberg, Philip Alexander, Theodor Dunkelgrün Professors Joanna Weinberg and Philip Alexander with Dr Theodor Dunkelgrün discourse on the Midrash. Covering a broad range of texts, from late antiquity to the modern period, including non-rabbinic and non-Jewish literature, an impressive array of the leading names in the field have produced a volume that seeks […]
Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story
In an astute and moving exposé of war’s futility – part memoir, part reportage – award-winning writer and journalist Matti Friedman, in conversation with Hugo Rifkind, recounts in his nonfiction work Pumpkinflowers the fate that befell an Israeli military outpost on the Lebanese borders in the 1990s. A lyrical yet devastating insight into the day-to-day […]
The Curse of Cash
Speakers: Kenneth Rogoff, Andrew Haldane One of the world’s leading economists, Harvard Professor and chess grandmaster, Kenneth Rogoff, makes a persuasive case for ridding the world of high value paper money. Even as people in advanced economies are using less paper money, there is more cash in circulation – a record $1.4 trillion in U.S. […]
The Left’s Jewish Problem
Speakers: Dave Rich, Nick Cohen In his thought-provoking new work, The Left’s Jewish Problem: Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and Anti-Semitism, Dave Rich offers a judicious analysis of the Left’s increasingly controversial ‘Jewish problem’. He examines the widening gulf between British Jews and the anti-Israel left and, based on fresh academic research, demonstrates that while the election […]
Voices From Pinterland
Speakers: Claudie Blakely, Ilan Goodman, Malcolm Sinclair, Alison Steadman, Kenneth Cranham, Michael Billington, Honor Borwick, Tristram Powell An exhilarating event featuring 17 early works by Harold Pinter, comprising his essays, sketches and radio plays, displaying the variety and wit of Pinter’s extraordinary talent. Starring Claudie Blakely, Ilan Goodman, Malcolm Sinclair and Alison Steadman and narrated by Kenneth […]
How Game Theory, Strategy and Probability Rule Our Lives
Speakers: Haim Shapiro Using a grand piano as his prop, Haim Shapira explores the interplay between happiness and game theory in his contemplation of an eclectic range of theories. His books provide many humorous anecdotes and insightful examples of how our daily lives are affected by Game Theory, the mathematical formulisation of interactive decision-making. Drawing […]
Fiction of Guilt and Identity
Speakers: John Steinberg, Richard Aronowitz, Jenni Frazer John Steinberg’s Blue Skies Over Berlin is a moving and thought-provoking book about guilt and identity, featuring a young German woman who moves to London from war-ravaged Berlin in 1956. Taking a false name – Charlotte Brown – she lands the job of her dreams at the National […]