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 Times of Israel posted June 5 2017 LONDON — After two leaders of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) decided to toss their hats into the ring to square off against two pro-Israel Conservative MPs in Britain’s June 8 general election, it looks like all bets are off. Chairman and vice-chairman of the JLM […]
For the Jewish News published May 11 2017 On a gorgeous late spring morning, Mike Freer is sitting on a bench in a lushly gardened Golders Green neighbourhood, almost entirely occupied by strictly Orthodox families. This is Freer’s third election: he won the seat in 2010, following the death of Labour’s Rudi Vis, who had […]
For the Jewish Chronicle published April 28 2017 We all remember, I expect, days in our childhood or adolescence when it seemed as though nothing would ever happen, that the world would never move on and allow us to… do stuff. That sense of torpor permeates every one of the 448 pages of Joel Dicker’s […]
For the JC published April 21 2107 Before the Kray twins and other notorious East End villains, there were – inevitably – Jewish gangsters. And the king of the super-villains, the architect of organised crime in the UK – a dubious honour – was Jacob Colmore, more usually known as Jack Spot. Now Jack Spot’s […]
For the JC published April 14 2017 Conversation with the Israeli singer-songwriter David Broza is a bit like sitting next to a waterfall — no, make that a torrent. Ideas and words pour out of Broza in an almost unceasing flow, from memories of his beloved grandfather, Wellesley Aron, to the peace work he himself […]
For the Jewish News Posted March 30 2017 One of Britain’s top advertising agencies is to rebrand itself in the names of its original Jewish founders, as part of a campaign to encourage diversity in the advertising industry. Grey London, whose headquarters are in Hatton Garden, the heart of the jewellery trade, has reached back […]
For the JC published March 24 2017 Years ago I used to enjoy — in a bad way — the books of a novelist, who shall remain anonymous to spare her blushes. The point was that it didn’t really matter which of the writer’s many, many oeuvres I got out of the library, as the […]
For the Times of Israel posted March 22 2017 LONDON — A British campus speaking tour came to an abrupt end on Tuesday for Professor Richard Falk, when Middlesex University cancelled his appearance scheduled for Wednesday. The tour was intended to promote his book, “Palestine’s Horizon: Towards a Just Peace.” Falk is a former UN […]
For the Jewish News published March 10 2017 “He will never be a soldier” is a phrase to chill the blood of many Israeli parents, when the army tells them that for physical or mental reasons, their child won’t make it into the Israel Defence Forces. Not being in the army can have a catastrophic […]
LONDON — It was just a routine follow-up call to 120 British synagogues — but in one of those calls, a charity found buried treasure. The long-dormant lives of London Jews during World War I are hardly on the radar of the majority of Britons. But “London Jews in the First World War,” funded by […]