Bidisha Mamata
Bidisha is a broadcaster, journalist and film-maker. Her latest publication is The Future of Serious Art (Nov 2020) and her latest film series, Aurora, launched in 2020 and is ongoing. Bidisha specialises in international human rights, social justice and the arts and offers political analysis and cultural diplomacy tying these interests together. She writes for the main UK broadsheets and presents and commentates heavily for BBC TV and radio, ITN, CNN, ViacomCBS and Sky News. Her fifth book, Asylum and Exile: Hidden Voices of London (2015), is based on her outreach work in UK prisons, refugee charities and detention centres. Her first short film, An Impossible Poison, received its London premier in March 2018. It has been highly acclaimed and selected for numerous international film festivals. She is currently presenting the Hello Happiness audio series for Wellcome Collection, all about mental and physical health.
Image cr Suki Dhanda
Hope: A Tragedy
Darkly hilarious, dangerously subversive and extraordinarily bold, Shalom Auslander delivered a hilarious and disquieting examination of the burdens and abuse of history. The hero of Hope: A Tragedy had hoped to escape the past, history, wars and genocide in a rural US town but nothing happens as expected. We heard from one of the most original, wittiest and darkest voices on the Jewish American scene.
From The Feminine Mystique to Fifty Shades – 50 Years On
“The book that pulled the trigger on history”, The Feminine Mystique created an instant impact on its publication in 1963, altering consciousness, culture and lives. On the 50th Anniversary of its publication, Jewish Book Week looked at the continued reverberations of Betty Friedan’s feminist rallying cry, in a discussion including two generations of women writers and artists.
Lisa Appignanesi, Julie Bindel, Bidisha and Leah Thorn examine how a book ignited a revolution, taking t...
Between the Lines
As Leonard Cohen has written, ‘there’s a blaze of light in every word’. Words shape our personal identities, our relationships and our societies. They are the crux of all human interactions. The relationship between writer, translator and reader is explicated by award-winning poet Sophie Herxheimer, translator Ros Schwartz and publisher Cécile Menon.
We Fight Fascists
Jewish soldiers returned to Britain after WWII believing they had defeated fascism in Europe. Yet in London they faced a revived fascist movement, inspired by Oswald Mosley, stirring up agitation against Jews and communists. We Fight Fascists is the story of the 43 Jewish ex-servicemen and women – the 43 Group – who fought back. Their numbers quickly swelled as they were joined by gentiles and younger Jews, including hairdresser Vidal Sassoon, who used the tools of his trade ̵...
Inside Stories
A psychiatrist and a neurologist walk into a book festival. Not the start of a joke, but of a fascinating hour as two experts help us to make sense of the mind and to mind the senses. Radio 4 presenter and The Nocturnal Brain author Dr Guy Leschziner returns with The Man Who Tasted Words: Inside the Strange and Startling World of Our Senses. He explores how they construct our perception of the world around us, including case studies such as Bill Oddie’s musical hal...
Hope is a Woman’s Name
An indigenous Bedouin in a Jewish state and a fifth daughter in a patriarchal society, Amal Elsana Alh’jooj was a shepherd at the age of five. Always driven to pursue justice and equality, from her early teens she ran literary classes for women, marking the beginning of a lifelong career promoting policy change for Israel’s Bedouin. Today Amal is instrumental in shaping public opinion on Israel’s marginalised minor...
