A Life In Verse
Speakers: Dannie Abse, Ruth Padel This session combined an interview and readings, Ruth Padel and Dannie Abse covered writing, love, humour and the role of art, along with the Abse’s latest book, The Presence, a stark and moving literary confrontation with absence and loss. This was a wonderful opportunity to hear the wit and wisdom […]
Figuring the Human
Speakers: Monica Bohm-Duchen, Jackie Wullschlager, Eliane Strosberg, Andrew Renton Monica Bohm-Duchen, author of the first comprehensive monograph on Polish-born, British-domiciled artist Josef Herman and Marc Chagall’s biographer Jackie Wullschlager join Eliane Strosberg who, in Human Expressionism, explored the work of Jewish artists and their avoidance of nihilism in a century that saw the vanishing of […]
Rhyming Life and Death
Speakers: Amos Oz, Nicholas de Lange For Amos Oz, the wrong word in a sentence is as discordant as a false note in a piece of music. Nicholas de Lange has been translating his work since 1971. Here he interviewed the novelist about his latest book, Rhyming Life and Death, their shared passion for language […]
Sashenka: Fiction and History
Speakers: Simon Sebag Montefiore, Ariana Koek He had been commended for the lively pace of his biographies of Stalin and Catherine the Great. From megalomaniac leaders to ordinary people, who believed in the Revolution, but were crushed by its machinery, the move from History to story-making was only natural, or was it? Montefiore spoke about […]
The Counterfeiter
Speakers: Adolf Burger, Joanna Newman Winner of the 2008 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film, The Counterfeiters retraces the true story of Adolf Burger, recounted in his memoirThe Devil’s Workshop. A typographer by trade, he became one of a group of deportees forced to produce impeccable imitation bank notes in Sachsenhausen concentration camp with […]
Amos Oz: Urgent Words
Speakers: Amos Oz, Jonathan Freedland Amos Oz has often said he writes with two pens: one for his novels, the other to expose injustices and promote peace. Jonathan Freedland spoke to the peace activist, the man who believes it is a writer’s duty to confront iniquities no matter how uncomfortable they prove to be.
The Last Word: Reporting the Middle East
Speakers: David Landau, Alan Rusbridger David Landau is the editor of the avowedly secular and progressive Israeli daily, Haaretz. As an orthodox Jew, Landau was not an obvious choice for the position, but states that the only way of negotiating one’s way through Israel’s impossibly self-divided body politic is, regardless of one’s opinion, to invite […]
All Things Tire of Themselves: Arnold Wesker
Speakers: Arnold Wesker Time parts memory They say only the aged die of nostalgia, yet Still young, I lift ten years to resurrect The Lane, Gas-lamps, fog and chestnuts roasted On a shovel gingerly held above hot coals. The Lane of their hearts scream with loss In the dim-lit streets where lovely boys Once bounced […]
Israel Through My Lens
Speakers: Ruth Corman, David Rubinger David Rubinger has captured some of the most powerful images of his time. No one has done a better job of showing the history of Israel in all its glory and pain. The stories behind those photographs and the people he has met are utterly captivating, but one of the […]
Theodore Herzl: Shlomo Avineri
Conventional accounts maintain that the Dreyfus Affair was the turning point in Herzl’s life towards Zionism. However, a careful analysis of his writings and voluminous diary suggest a much more complex picture. More than many others in his generation and Viennese environment, Herzl reacted to the major crises in European society and culture at the […]
The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
Speakers: Danel Mendelsohn, Adam Phillips In his remarkable and original epic, part memoir, part reportage, part mystery, and part detective work, Daniel Mendelsohn tried to reconstruct the reality of the lives the six members of his family – his great-uncle Shmiel, his wife and their four daughters- who perished in the Holocaust and whose compelling […]
Once Upon A Country
Speakers: Sari Nusseibeh “I have faith that, sooner or later, somehow or another – I’m not sure how – Jews and Arabs will find a way to live together that is totally acceptable and beneficial to us both. In doing this, we can also impact the region around us and, further afield, the world around […]