Good journalists are endlessly curious and should be endlessly enthusiastic. My features run the gamut from politics to travel writing. They all have one thing in common – to transmit that enthusiasm to the reader.
For Jewish News September 2024 The tormented faces of the young survivors of the Nova festival massacre last October stay with the viewer, long after the conclusion of Yariv Mozer’s painful and powerful film, We Will Dance Again. Scheduled to be screened in the prime time Storyville strand on BBC2 on September 26, the film […]
For the JC April 2024 “He looked me over, assessed my wristwatch, considered my shoes and the likely cost of my hairdo, and tried to decide if I came from a family worth talking to; such is Italy”. In one crisp sentence, Derek B Miller sets the reader off on a magical mystery tour, revolving […]
Harvey Keitel Life magazine March/April 2024 Harvey Keitel’s face is lined and craggy, as befits a Hollywood grandee of 84. But when Keitel — renowned for his roles as a villain or a thug in iconic films such as Mean Streets, Reservoir Dogs, Taxi Driver or Pulp Fiction — smiles, the years fall away as […]
For Jewish News March 2024 At the end of a quiet and unassuming cul-de-sac in Hendon sits a quiet, but revolutionary, Jewish social enterprise. It’s safe to say that Gateways, an alternative kind of education facility for young people who have struggled to find their place in mainstream schools, is both unassuming and revolutionary — […]
For the JC February 2024 Out of interest, I Googled how long it might take to walk the 90 plus kilometres from the Polish town of Mezritsh to the once important Jewish centre of Lublin. Twenty or so hours, was the answer. For Manya Wilkinson’s hapless trio of young boys trying to make the same […]
For the Jewish Chronicle September 29 2023 Lavie Tidhar’s Maror was one of the sensational novels of 2022, a violent rollercoaster and drug-fuelled ride into Israel’s history, with a particular focus on the Lebanon war of 1983. Now, in Adama, Tidhar reaches even further back, first to the death camps of Europe and then to […]
For Jewish News Life magazine September 2023 Interested in Mozart’s love letters to his wife, Constanze? or the early writings of Isaac Newton? Or perhaps Rosh Hashanah greeting cards are more your thing, or gorgeous calligraphy showing the Gates of Heaven opening on Yom Kippur? All of these and much, much more, can be found […]
For the JC Rosh Hashanah magazine September2023 On a chilly London evening earlier this year, an excited crowd temporarily held their breath as a painting went on sale. It was no ordinary painting: it was Wassily Kandinsky’s glorious Murnau mit Kirche II, which fetched a new auction record of £37.2 million for the artist. In […]
For JN Aug 2023 Not everyone, thinks Marlon Solomon, has the patience or temperament to sit down and read a book about important subjects. He has a different approach: he introduces otherwise “heavy” issues through humour. And you can’t get much heavier than antisemitism, the hatred of Jews which has been around for more than […]
For Jewish News May 2023 Bat-Dor Ojalvo is the director of one of the year’s most important films — In the Name of the Father — screened in the BBC’s prestigious Storyville slot last week. It is the deeply disturbing account of a Breslov Chasidic community, set up in a northern Israeli town, Yavniel. The […]