Chaim Weizmann: A BiographyBy Jehuda Reinharz and Motti Golan Brandeis University Press (pp. 820) Chaim Weizmann was a remarkable man who truly deserved the accolade of “a founding father of Israel.”This majestic work by Jehuda Reinharz and Motti Golani, Chaim Weizmann: A Biography is as absorbing as it is comprehensive. Both authors have written about Weizmann for … Read more
Following the killing of Hassan Nasrallah by the IDF, Jeremy Corbyn – the Labour party’s former and now expelled leader – commented, “Israel’s genocidal intent and violence in Gaza is being repeated in Lebanon. This is what Islamophobia, dehumanisation of brown lives and total impunity looks like” (Morning Star 30 September 2024). Corbyn’s words epitomised the … Read more
Goodbye to Russia: A Personal Reckoning from the Ruins of War By Sarah Rainsford, published by Bloomsbury 2024, pp.357 7 October 2023 has become a day of remembrance. On the anniversary on that day in a few weeks, some Russians will also remember Anna Politkovskaya – ‘a journalist who did not lie’. She was gunned … Read more
Many Israelis believe that Benjamin Netanyahu has blood on his hands. Since the release of 105 hostages through negotiations last November, the Israeli government has chosen the priority of destroying Hamas rather than securing the release of the remaining hostages. The families of the hostages have been calling for negotiations for almost a year – … Read more
Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich By Richard J. Evans, published by Allen Lane 2024, pp.598 Why did so many hitherto responsible citizens become fellow travellers in Hitler’s Germany? Why were ordinary people in their millions sucked into a whirlpool of deception? These are the questions that have been repeatedly asked since 1945. … Read more
At the beginning of this month, Victor Kara-Murza, a British-Russian dissident, was suddenly released from his Siberian strict-regime camp and flown out of Russia as part of a major prisoner exchange. Murderers and spies were taken to the East, free thinkers and human rights activists were taken to the West. When asked if this exchange … Read more
Before the opening of the new Parliament in London last week, MPs swore allegiance to the Crown on the King James Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, the Sundar Gutka prayerbook, the Koran and the Hebrew Bible. All this demonstrated the wide diversity of British society in 2024. This positive imagery was shattered by the election of … Read more
In 1939, Nicholas Winton, with his colleagues in the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia (BCRC), Doreen Warriner and Trevor Chadwick, were responsible for bringing 669 children from Nazi-occupied Prague to the safety of the United Kingdom. Winton’s remarkable story was told in the recent film ‘One Life’, in which the brilliant Anthony Hopkins played … Read more
Night of Power: The Betrayal of the Middle East By Robert Fisk, published by HarperCollins (Fourth Estate) 2024 pp.644 Robert Fisk, a long-time foreign correspondent for the Independent, died in Dublin in October 2020. This posthumous book which picks up from where his 2005 book The Great War of Civilisation left off and which covers the … Read more
If numerous opinion polls on the forthcoming general election in the UK are to be believed, Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party is on course to achieve its lowest number of seats in the House of Commons since 1906. In contrast, the victory of Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party is predicted to exceed Tony Blair’s landslide in … Read more