The Lines We Draw: A Jewish Journalist’s Search for Identity

03/01/2026
60 min
[video_views]

What does it mean to be Jewish? As a child in 1970s Birmingham, Tim Franks was a practising Jew with few relations and little sense of lineage. As the BBC’s Middle East Correspondent he was denounced both as a self-hating Jew and an Islamophobe. So he set out to trace his ancestral roots from Constantinople to Curaçao, via Amsterdam, the death camps and Downing Street, uncovering rabbis, refugees, revolutionaries – even Disraeli. The Prix Bayeux winning Newshour host joins Jonathan Rosenthal, The Economist‘s international editor, to discuss.

About the speakers

Tim Franks

Tim Franks presents Newshour on the BBC World Services. He was previously a BBC reporter for almost two decades, including nine years as an award-winning foreign correspondent, travelling across Europe and the Middle East. He’s covered several major conflicts, from Iraq and Israel–Lebanon, to South Sudan and Ukraine. Tim won one of the most prestigious […]

Jonathan Rosenthal

Jonathan Rosenthal is an award-winning journalist and speaker. He is International Editor of The Economist. His previous roles have included Africa Editor, International Banking Editor and European Business and Finance correspondent at The Economist and mining editor and industrial editor at Business Report.

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The Lines We Draw: A Jewish Journalist’s Search for Identity

03/01/2026
|
60 min

Speaker

Tim Franks

Tim Franks presents Newshour on the BBC World Services. He was previously a BBC reporter for almost two decades, including nine years as an...

Jonathan Rosenthal

Jonathan Rosenthal is an award-winning journalist and speaker. He is International Editor of The Economist. His previous roles have included Africa Editor, International Banking...