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 the JC December 2020 If there is one person who cannot wait for lockdown to be lifted, it is filmmaker Dekel Berenson. The Haifa-born writer, producer and director is champing at the bit to get to Israel, to begin making his first feature film. In the meantime, Berenson has become an award-winner for his […]
Adele Geras for JC by Jenni Frazer Nov 2020 The year is 1841 — coincidentally the same year as the JC was established — and we are on a ship bound for Tasmania, sailing from London. And the passengers? One hundred and eighty women, all convicted of a variety of petty crimes. It’s a long […]
For the JC Oct 2020 Germany was “reborn as a nation” says one young woman, talking about the decision to hold unprecedented war crimes trials in her home town of Nuremberg. During the Second World War, Nuremberg was the place where Hitler held his massive rallies, addressing thousands of adoring Germans in a gigantic stadium, […]
Dan Rosenfield for JC by Jenni Frazer Nov 28 2020 When Boris Johnson’s new chief of staff in Downing Street first saw the girl he was to marry, the two of them were on a Reform Synagogue Youth (RSY) summer camp in Israel. But the pair were just friends until Mancunian Dan Rosenfield, a long-time […]
For the JC Oct 23 2020 There is a whiff of sulphur about Barbara Amiel’s extraordinary new book, Friends and Enemies, her score-settling 600-page memoir. Punches are unpulled and holds are not barred as she trenchantly trashes the great and the not so good. She has no problems in having a go at, say, Esther […]
For the JC October 1 2020 When a world traveller such as Sir Michael Palin says that “there’s hardly a corner of the planet untrod by Kaplan’s boots”, you know you’re in for a treat and a roller-coaster ride around the globe. And Marion Kaplan’s big book of photo-journalism provides just that — hundreds of […]
For the JC Sep 3 2020 A long time ago, there was a little wooden house by a lake”. So begins Thomas Harding’s magical re-telling of his 2015 adult non-fiction book, The House By The Lake, which was shortlisted for the Costa Prize. With exquisite illustrations by the renowned children’s artist Britta Teckentrup, this is […]
For the JC October 16 2020 The writer, film-maker and psychologist David Cohen is about to send out copies of his latest book to “Boris, Bibi, Trump and the lunatic in Brazil [Bolsonaro]”. It’s not such a fanciful idea. Each man presides over a country in which the ability to cope with coronavirus appears to […]
For the JC August 2020 When David Marks and Kathy Peck thought they might have to change their wedding arrangements because their rabbi would not be available, they suggested asking World Jewish Congress president Ronald Lauder to perform the ceremony. That is because David and Kathy are not just any engaged couple. He has just […]
For the JC July 2020 The late boxing promoter, Jimmy O’Pharrow, founded and ran a legendary gym in New York, Starrett City Boxing Club. It was almost entirely a gym for African-Americans, but he had one outstanding white protegé — Dmitriy Salita. O’Pharrow, who died in 2011, summed up Salita like this: “My gym’s like […]