Jenni Frazer
Jenni Frazer has had an award-winning career in journalism for over 30 years, where she has performed nearly every kind of role, from news reporter to bureau chief, from editing and commissioning, to running a team of reporters. She has interviewed many major celebrities and been a media commentator on UK radio and TV, including News 24 and The World Tonight for the BBC.
William Frankel In conversation with Jenni Frazer
The distinguished former editor of the Jewish Chronicle shared with Jenni Frazer some of the anecdotes from his autobiography Tea With Einstein.
The Ambassador
Award-winning crime writer Matt Rees teamed up with the late Yehuda Avner, adviser to Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Menachem Begin, to write The Ambassador, an ‘alternative’ historical novel set in Nazi Germany. What if Israel had been founded before the Holocaust? Might its existence have changed the course of European history? Journalist Jenni Frazer moderates.
Born Survivors
In Born Survivors Wendy Holden recounts the tale of three exceptional women who all gave birth in concentration camps towards the end of the war in the most adverse of circumstances, whose babies, against all the odds, survived. Wendy Holden is joined by one of the ‘infant’ survivors Eva Clarkeand interviewed by the journalist Jenni Frazer.
Fiction of Guilt and Identity
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 Gallery, becoming enmeshed in a world of aristocratic rogues, conmen, thieves and shady art dealers.
Head of Sotheby’s Restitution Department, Richard Aronowitz’s An American Decade is an ambitious novel...
Uprooted
Israel’s declaration of independence precipitated not only the birth of a Jewish state, but the beginnings of a mass upheaval, as the ancient Jewish communities of the Arab World were forced to flee. Nearly a million people left. Lyn Julius examines why, and what became of them, particularly those who fled to the newly-found State of Israel.
From Things Lost
Professor Shirli Gibert and Ambassador Yitzchak Mayer discuss their new books, stories of memory and survival told through letters. Chaired by Jenni Frazer.
A Long Night in Paris: Thriller Fiction
Former editor in chief of Haaretz and international best-selling author Dov Alfon discusses his electrifying novel, A Long Night in Paris. Hailed by critics as ‘the best Israeli thriller ever written’, Alfon’s hero, Colonel Abadi, head of Israel’s most secretive intelligence service, grapples with ruthless Chinese commandos, the byzantine Paris establishment and the back-stabbing Israeli intelligence community, all against the backdrop of the city of ...
Live a Little
Nonagenarian Beryl Dusinbery, forgetter of her own children and tormentor of her two longsuffering carers, meets the sprightly Shimi Carmelli, last of the eligible bachelors of North London. Shimi is prized for his ability to do up his own buttons, speak without spitting and walk without the aid of a frame. Prize-winning author Howard Jacobson has written a characteristically funny and wickedly observed novel about falling in love toward the end of your life.
In Associ...
Spies of No Country
In 1948, with Israel’s existence hanging in the balance, four men, part of a ragtag unit known as the Arab Section, consisting of Jews native to the Arab world, went undercover in Beirut. Here, they spent the next two years operating out of a newsstand, collecting intelligence and sending messages back to Israel via a radio whose antenna was disguised as a clothesline. Of the dozen spies in the Arab section at the outbreak of the ’48 war, five were caught and executed. But in the ...
Legacy
In the early 1800s Lehmann Gluckstein fled Eastern Europe for Whitechapel. He and his family created a small tobacco factory that eventually became the largest catering company in the world: J. Lyons. For over a century Lyons restaurants and corner houses were on every high street, bringing the world to the British people, democratising luxury and globalising our tastes. Legacy: One Family, a Cup of Tea, and the Company who took on the World charts the rise and fall of one of the most influen...
The Tunnel
This discussion was recorded via the Zoom webinar facility.
One of the world’s most renowned novelists, A.B. Yehoshua has been dubbed, together with Amos Oz and David Grossman ‘one of the three tenors of Israeli literature’. In conversation with literary critic David Herman he discusses his life and work, and his new novel, The Tunnel, an exploration of identity, ageing, family, secrets and spies.
Yehoshua’s protagonist Zvi Luria has begun to lose his memory. When his wi...
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks: A Tribute
The death of Rabbi Lord Sacks left a huge void in the world of Jewish theological and philosophical writing and discourse. Jewish Book Week was honoured to have presented so many wonderful events with him, each of which showed the range of his humanity and knowledge; his contributions deepened and reflected our values, seeking always to widen the breadth of our know...
The Curious Rise of Alex Lazarus
When restless advertising executive Alex Lazarus meets charming lawyer Julian Lloyd-Mason while looking after their children in the park, they hatch a plan to launch a parenting website. Primaparent.com goes global and Alex finds the fame and fortune he always craved. But the trappings of success come at a price; as his life begins to fall apart, he realises too late that wanting more sometimes gets you less. Described as “brilliant” by the Jewish Chronicle, The Curious Rise of Alex ...
Plunder
In 2015 Menachem Kaiser discovered that the grandfather he had never met had tried for 30 years to reclaim an apartment building in Sosnowiec that had belonged to his family prior to World War Two. The Fulbright Fellow decided to take up his case and was soon on a circuitous path to encounters with long-time residents of the building and a Polish lawyer known as ‘The Killer’. Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure – also invo...
Hollywood and Israel
From Sinatra’s pro-Zionist rallying to Spielberg’s present-day peace-making, Hollywood has long enjoyed a “special relationship” with Israel. Historians Giora Goodman & Tony Shaw offer an innovative account of this relationship, both on and off the screen, investigating the ways Hollywood’s moguls, directors, and actors have supported or challenged Israel for over 70 years. Detailing the political involvement with Israel – and Palestine – of...
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