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 May 2021 There are those who say Arye Myers must have a charmed life. The Bradford-born Myers, who made aliya nine years ago, is the only paramedic working for Magen David Adom who previously worked for the London Ambulance Service. In London, Myers was working for the LAS during the tragic events […]
Freedland interviews for JC May 2021 by Jenni Frazer Fifty years ago the journalist and broadcaster Michael Freedland launched a groundbreaking series of programmes on BBC Radio London, called “You Don’t Have To Be Jewish”, capturing the brightest and best of the Jewish world. Now, thanks to his son, Guardian and JC columnist Jonathan Freedland, […]
For the JC March 23 2021 The photograph that Marc Wilson didn’t take is, nevertheless, etched in his memory. It was the moment when the documentary photographer was talking to a 96-year-old Holocaust survivor, Rita, in her Tel Aviv home. Whatever terrible experience she was relating at that moment remains unspoken. But Rita’s daughter Ronit, […]
For the JC April 2021 Of the hundreds of terrifying incidents recorded by Judy Batalion in her powerful book, The Light of Days, one, perhaps, encapsulates the overwhelming problems faced by young Jews in Poland during wartime. It was a matter of trust: of how to know who to trust, or who might betray you […]
For the JC March 23 2021 The photograph that Marc Wilson didn’t take is, nevertheless, etched in his memory. It was the moment when the documentary photographer was talking to a 96-year-old Holocaust survivor, Rita, in her Tel Aviv home. Whatever terrible experience she was relating at that moment remains unspoken. But Rita’s daughter Ronit, […]
For JN Life magazine March 2021 Harlan Coben says he really only has two main interests — “writing and family”. The multi-award-winning novelist — with a staggering 75 million books in print worldwide — is very clear. “I think it’s tough to be a writer with a hobby. Part of writing is guilt: so every […]
For Jewish News March 26 2021 In the dying days of Lockdown Three, national press attention — and that of the Jewish News — turned to apparent wholesale ignoring of pandemic guidelines by members of strictly Orthodox communities in Stamford Hill. Shops were filled with maskless shoppers, not socially distanced; schools remained open, in defiance […]
Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell by John Preston Viking Books £18.99 Reviewed for the JC February 2021 I interviewed Robert Maxwell once, an experience not unlike being run over at speed with a steamroller. He was, as even his few friends would attest, a monstrous man, self-obsessed to the point of mania, deeply rude […]
For the JC January 28 2021 You know how it is. You’re sitting at your desk, after yet another Zoom meeting and wishing with all your might that you could go somewhere — anywhere. Well, now, courtesy of an elite group of Israeli fighter pilots, you can. Virtually, obviously, but in these days of lockdown […]
For the JC January 28 2021 “I think of myself as fundamentally Jewish — but it has been a hell of a struggle, against a sense of illegitimacy, and that it’s a gift that has been bestowed on me, that I can never take for granted.” Londoner Simon May is a philosopher, professor and the […]