Events 2019
02/03/2019 - 7:00 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, a German-Jewish refugee, educated in England, made her name as a novelist in India. Married to a Parsi architect, she saw, from the ins...
02/03/2019 - 7:00 pm
Kings Place, Hall 2
Love rules our lives. Philosopher Simon May, in a radically new theory of love, examines its real aim. For all its wild unpredictability, wh...
02/03/2019 - 8:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
Ever since the movement’ s inception, Zionists have advocated very different ideas of Israel: would the dream of Herzl, Ahad Ha’am, Weizmann, Jab...
03/03/2019 - 11:00 am
Kings Place, Hall 1
Eli Rosenbaum of the US Justice Department has been described as ‘the world’s most successful Nazi hunter’. However, Professor Mary Fulbroo...
03/03/2019 - 11:00 am
Kings Place, Hall 2
Our world is undergoing a seismic transformation. Digital technologies – from artificial intelligence to blockchain, from robotics to virtual reality &...
03/03/2019 - 11:00 am
Kings Place, St Pancras
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 Angl...
03/03/2019 - 12:00 pm
Kings Place, Limehouse Room
Francesca Jakobi talks about the perils and pitfalls of fictionalising a family story. In Bitter, it is 1969, and while the summer of love lingers i...Free. Unticketed Fringe Event
03/03/2019 - 12:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
In apartheid South Africa, many desperate parents fought to rescue their children, arrested for so-called ‘anti-apartheid’ activities, from the s...
03/03/2019 - 12:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 2
Explore a collection of political tales selected and introduced by the brilliant critic and author Michael Rosen. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, ...
03/03/2019 - 12:30 pm
Kings Place, St Pancras
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 glor...
03/03/2019 - 1:30 pm
Kings Place, Limehouse Room
Edward Evans presents a brilliantly funny novel. Israel has no idea who he is. Tracing his memories, track by musical track, he uncovers a cosmic emptiness a...Free. Unticketed Fringe Event
03/03/2019 - 2:00 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
In a world riven with bitter divisions, perverting every opportunity for dialogue, Simon Schama examined the peculiar force of contradictory argument in Jewi...
03/03/2019 - 2:00 pm
Kings Place, Hall 2
Acclaimed poet and publisher to the great and good, Jeremy Robson talks about his five decades in publishing, working with such intriguing and diverse figure...
03/03/2019 - 2:00 pm
Kings Place, St Pancras
Emigré sculptor Oscar Nemon, whose subjects included Princess Diana, Queen Elizabeth, Winston Churchill and Sigmund Freud, was one of the 20th century’...
03/03/2019 - 3:00 pm
Kings Place, Limehouse Room
Robert Chandler, in conversation with David Herman, discuss his recently published translation of Lev Ozerov’ s stupendous Portraits without Frames...Free. Unticketed Fringe Event
03/03/2019 - 3:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
International human rights lawyer Philippe Sands discussed his phenomenal BBC series, The Rat Lines, the story of the post-war Nazi escape route out...
03/03/2019 - 3:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 2
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 l...A children's/ young adult's discount is available for this event.
03/03/2019 - 3:30 pm
Kings Place, St Pancras
1930s Shanghai: in the years before the Japanese invaded, the city was a haven for outlaws from all over the world; a place where pasts could be forgotten, f...
03/03/2019 - 4:30 pm
Kings Place, Limehouse Room
Heather Valencia and Merle Bachman introduce the lives, works and indelible impact of Yiddish writer Avrom Sutzkever and Scottish poet A.C. Jacobs, with read...Free. Unticketed Fringe Event
03/03/2019 - 5:00 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
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....
03/03/2019 - 5:00 pm
Kings Place, Hall 2
Acclaimed writer and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg presents a moving and poignant tale of one of history’s greatest love stories. Paris, 1117: Heloise, a yo...
03/03/2019 - 5:00 pm
Kings Place, St Pancras
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....This event has live speech-to-text subtitles provided by Stagetext
03/03/2019 - 6:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
International bestselling author and historian Simon Sebag-Montefiore selects over 100 letters, from Rameses, Suleiman the Magnificent and Elizabeth I, to St...
03/03/2019 - 6:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 2
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. Through...
03/03/2019 - 6:30 pm
Kings Place, St Pancras
Harry Freedman, author of the acclaimed The Talmud: A Biography, and novelist Ariel Kahn discuss and explore the meaning and relevance of the Kabbal...
03/03/2019 - 8:00 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
Brexit is the most divisive issue in a generation; it unleashed a rise in populism, and exposed the fault lines of a nation divided by wealth, geography and ...
03/03/2019 - 8:00 pm
Kings Place, Hall 2
Isaiah Berlin was one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century – a man who set ideas on fire. His defence of liberty and plurality was passionate a...
03/03/2019 - 8:00 pm
Kings Place, St Pancras
Heritage tourism has boomed in the last half century, especially in older industrial cities such as Kiev, Berlin, Bucharest, Krakow, London and New York. Jew...
10/03/2019 - 11:00 am
Kings Place, Hall 1
‘Literature isn’t a moral beauty contest’, claimed Roth, ‘The belief it inspires is what counts.’ Literary titan and multi-awar...
04/03/2019 - 12:30 pm
JW3, Auditorium at JW3
Christopher Andrew, the world’s leading historian of intelligence, presents a scintillating global account of three thousand years of spying. From the ...
04/03/2019 - 7:00 pm
Kings Place, Hall 2
What comes after #MeToo? In this ‘chilling exposé’ of British justice, Helena Kennedy QC, one of our most eminent lawyers and human rights activists, co...
04/03/2019 - 7:00 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
Turkish-British writer Elif Shafak is an awarded novelist, a public intellectual and an outspoken activist for women’s rights and LGBT rights. Alice Sh...
04/03/2019 - 8:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
A masterpiece of deep learning and fine sensibility, Robert Alter’s translation of the Hebrew Bible reanimates one of the formative works of our cultur...
04/03/2019 - 8:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 2
When she was 27, Ilana Kurshan found herself alone in Jerusalem in the wake of a painful divorce. She joined the world’s largest book club, learning da...
05/03/2019 - 12:30 pm
JW3, Auditorium at JW3
Legendary food writer Claudia Roden, exiled from Egypt in the ’50s, was drawn to the subject of food through a desire to remember her lost heritage. Cl...This event has live speech-to-text subtitles provided by Stagetext
05/03/2019 - 2:00 pm
JW3,
Former editor in chief of Haaretz and international best-selling author Dov Alfon discusses his electrifying novel, A Long Night in Paris. ...
05/03/2019 - 7:00 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
Winston Churchill towers over every other figure in 20th century British history. Award-winning historian Andrew Roberts draws on new sources to depict him i...
05/03/2019 - 7:00 pm
Kings Place, Hall 2
Painting in London in the post-WWII years is a story of friendships and shared experiences. Drawing on first-hand interviews, acclaimed art historian Martin ...
05/03/2019 - 8:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
Tolerance, equality, democracy, free speech, a free press, separation of church and state, progress: these and other values of the Enlightenment have guided ...
05/03/2019 - 8:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 2
Evolutions, ‘a breath-taking race through the immense scope of time and space that is our universe’, brings to life the latest scientific thinkin...
05/03/2019 - 8:30 pm
Kings Place, St Pancras
Lipika Pelham tells the extraordinary story of the Sephardi Jews of 17th century Amsterdam. The community, part of a ‘carnival of nations’ formed...
06/03/2019 - 7:00 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
“Strongman politics are ascendant”, Barack Obama wrote recently: “The politics of fear and resentment… is now on the move”. ...
06/03/2019 - 8:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
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 lif...
06/03/2019 - 8:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 2
Ferdinand Mount has long been fascinated by the great thinkers and politicians of the past two millennia. In his riveting and provocative book, Prime Mov...
07/03/2019 - 7:00 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
International bestselling author Anthony Horowitz talks about his ‘infectiously zestful’ novel, The Sentence is Death. Richard Pryce is a phenom...
07/03/2019 - 7:00 pm
Kings Place, Hall 2
For a generation, public debate has been corroded by a narrow derision of religion in the name of an often vaguely understood ‘science’. Bestsell...
07/03/2019 - 7:00 pm
Kings Place, St Pancras
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 ...With special guest author Yelena Moskovich
07/03/2019 - 8:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
The Holocaust never happened. The planet isn’t warming. Vaccines cause autism. All of us deny inconvenient truths sometimes, but what happens when denial b...
07/03/2019 - 8:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 2
In Insomnia, Marina Benjamin has produced an unsettling account of an unsettling condition, treating our inability to sleep not as a disorder, but a...
07/03/2019 - 8:30 pm
Kings Place, St Pancras
Join prize-winning tour guide, award-winning librarian and author Rachel Kolsky as she profiles her latest book, Women’s London. Inspired by walki...
09/03/2019 - 7:15 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
In January 2018, cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a survivor of Auschwitz, and then of Bergen-Belsen, addressed the Bundestag to commemorate Holocaust Memoria...
09/03/2019 - 7:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 2
David Constantine and Tom Kuhn have, for the first time, translated and edited the complete poems of Bertolt Brecht, the greatest German playwright of the 20...
09/03/2019 - 8:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
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 accus...
10/03/2019 - 11:00 am
Kings Place, Hall 2
In a history book that reads like a thriller, The Book Smugglers charts the incredible story of the ghetto inmates who rescued thousands of rare boo...
10/03/2019 - 11:00 am
Kings Place, St Pancras
Shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award 2018, and described by Philippe Sands as ‘Luminous, elegant, haunting’, The Cut Out Girl tells...
10/03/2019 - 12:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
Food: a subject close to our hearts and souls, as well as our stomachs. Two award-winning foodies — journalist and Spectator restaurant critic, ...
10/03/2019 - 12:30 pm
Kings Place, St Pancras
Critically-acclaimed memoirist and author Alba Arikha joins poet and translator Yvonne Green in an exploration of how the literary voice represents the multi...
10/03/2019 - 1:30 pm
Kings Place, Limehouse Room
Sarah Lightman noticed that The Book of Sarah is missing from the Bible, so she set out to make her own. In this stunning visual autobiography from ...Free. Unticketed Fringe Event
10/03/2019 - 2:00 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
Acclaimed investigative journalist and bestselling biographer Tom Bower, author of 24 books including the lives of Robert Maxwell, Richard Branson, Tony Blai...
10/03/2019 - 2:00 pm
Kings Place, Hall 2
When Franz Kafka died in 1924, his loyal champion Max Brod could not bring himself to fulfil his friend’s last instruction: to burn his remaining manus...
10/03/2019 - 2:00 pm
Kings Place, St Pancras
Forty, it has been said, is ‘the age when we become who we are.’ But does it ever feel like everyone — except you — is a proper adult? Do you wonde...
10/03/2019 - 3:00 pm
Kings Place, Limehouse Room
Eduard Shyfrin, in a fresh and innovative exploration, reveals how the ideas of Jewish mysticism — or Kabbalah — resonate with 21st century science....Free. Unticketed Fringe Event
10/03/2019 - 3:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
Ben Hecht was, according to Jean-Luc Godard, ‘a genius’ who ‘invented 80% of what is used in Hollywood movies today’. Besides produci...This event has live speech-to-text subtitles provided by Stagetext
10/03/2019 - 3:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 2
Bestselling children’s author and librettist Francesca Simon, with composer Gavin Higgins, produced an opera of her stunning epic Norse tale, The Monst...A children's/ young adult's discount is available for this event.
10/03/2019 - 3:30 pm
Kings Place, St Pancras
Paul Essinger, a tennis professional in his 30s, is about to play his final US Open. The bookies give him 1,200-1 odds on winning the title. Anxiety-ridden, ...
10/03/2019 - 4:30 pm
Kings Place, Limehouse Room
Dr Guy Leschziner, in conversation with sleep psychiatrist Hugh Selsick, takes a look at what really happens to our brain at night, taking us on a fascinatin...Free. Unticketed Fringe Event
10/03/2019 - 5:00 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
Acclaimed journalist Jonathan Freedland presents a gripping new thriller, the latest from his blockbuster novelist alter ego Sam Bourne. Somebody is murderi...
10/03/2019 - 5:00 pm
Kings Place, Hall 2
Munich, November 1918: in the final days of WWI, revolutionaries occupied official buildings and overthrew the monarchy. At the head of the newly declared Fr...
10/03/2019 - 5:00 pm
Kings Place, St Pancras
Zachary Leader presents the second volume of The Life of Saul Bellow. Arguably the greatest of American writers, Bellow’s enduring appeal perh...
10/03/2019 - 6:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
Is the novel an inherently feminine form? And is it a distinctive thing to be a female novelist or is that in itself a misogynistic idea? Focusing on the wri...
10/03/2019 - 6:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 2
Steven Zipperstein retells the shattering story of the Kishinev riot of 1903 in late-Tsarist Russia. It dominated the headlines in the western press for week...
10/03/2019 - 6:30 pm
Kings Place, St Pancras
Life into death, magic and demons. The landscape of this dark and powerful story is ancient Assyria some 3,000 years ago. It is a world where writing is in t...
10/03/2019 - 8:00 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
The grand finale of Jewish Book Week 2019, in partnership with World Jewish Relief, is a celebration of the power of words. A stellar line-up, featuring Henr...
10/03/2019 - 8:00 pm
Kings Place, Hall 2
This is a Live Relay of the event taking place in Hall 1. The grand finale of Jewish Book Week 2019, in partnership with World Jewish Relief, is a cel...
10/03/2019 - 8:00 pm
Kings Place, St Pancras
A stone wall or an iron gate reveal stories of community and schooling. An expression in a Cockney-Yiddish music-hall song or a union anthem from an 1889 tai...
10/03/2019 - 12:30 pm
Kings Place, Hall 2
In Opening the Drawer: The Hidden Identities of Polish Jews, Barry Cohen has brought together illustrated profiles of three generations of Poles who...
06/03/2019 - 7:00 pm
Kings Place, Hall 1
Double Bill Offer: Book for the Jewish Book Week events in Hall One and Hall Two tonight – ‘The Age of the Demagogue’ at 7pm and ‘G...
13/03/2019 - 8:00 pm
Kings Place,
Bart van Es’s The Cut Out Girl, described by Philippe Sands as ‘luminous, elegant, haunting’, tells the true story of the author’s grandpare...
06/03/2019 - 7:00 pm
Kings Place, St Pancras
Insiders / Outsiders examines the extraordinarily rich contribution of refugees from Nazi-dominated Europe to the visual culture, art education and...