The George Webber Memorial Event
Trust in the media is at an all-time low. How does the media exert its power, and are the stories that are told in repressive regimes so different from those conveyed in the West’s liberal democracies? James Harding, John Lloyd and Matthew d’Ancona, in conversation with professor and broadcaster, Rana Mitter, investigate exactly how truth can be mediated and distorted.
Have you ever wanted to know more about the classical canon but had no idea where to begin? Are you an aficionado who would like to widen your acquaintance with sublime music? Clemency Burton-Hill selects one piece of music for each day of the year in an interactive guide that allows you to listen as you learn, discussing her musical choices with internationally acclaimed singer, conductor and cellist Simon Wallfisch.
Sponsored by Dangoor Education
Journalist, broadcaster, and commanding figure in the arts, John Tusa has had a career fighting for – and winning victories – for the UK’s cultural and critical output. From the battle to create Newsnight in 1979, to standing up publicly for the independence of the BBC, to spearheading the recovery of the Barbican Centre. This is a fascinating romp through 60 years of making friends and, sometimes, enemies at the heart of British arts and media.
Antony Sher played the title role in Gregory Doran’s critically acclaimed RSC production of King Lear and his stupendous performance was designated ‘a crowning achievement in a major career’. Sher describes his year researching, rehearsing and performing one of the greatest roles in English theatre, in conversation with Doran.
Michael Baum and Paul Boorstin discuss why biblical stories remain a rich source of inspiration. Michael Baum’s novel Aaron’s Rod is a murder mystery, taking the reader on a gripping quest for an ancient artefact from the Assyrian conquest, via 20th century Hampstead, to modern day Israel. Paul Boorstin’s fiction David and the Philistine Woman tells the story of David and Goliath through the perspective of Nara, Goliath’s betrothed, in a witty and richly- embroidered narrative.
George Prochnik, in a vivid and compelling mix of biography and personal memoir, traces the life and thought of the visionary founder of the modern study of Kabbalah, Gershom Scholem, from his alienated childhood in Berlin, to his emigration to the land of his dreams, where he finds himself once more a ‘stranger in a strange land’.
Freedland, Jacobson and Schama take on Donald Trump, at least figuratively, as they compete for bandwidth to expose the latest exploits of the Western World’s most powerful and contentious leader. The inspiration for a satire by Jacobson, a thriller by Freedland and steaming articles by Schama et al, Trump is the object of obsessive interest to everyone.
Steven Morris has always cooked; his photographer son Rick Pushinsky has always eaten. Just Not Kosher is a stunning collection of recipe cards that began as a family archive of Steven’s 60 years of ‘making a mess in the kitchen’. For Rick, this repository was not just a set of instructions for his father’s favourite dishes; it represented the entire story of his family, told one tablespoon at a time.
Why are ‘negative’ feelings such as self-hatred, guilt, resentment, paranoia, hysteria, and overbearing mother-love characterised as ‘Jewish’? In her sparkling debut, Devorah Baum delves into film, fiction and psychoanalysis. In so doing, she explores what it’s like to be a Jewish woman, shining a light on cultural icons from Groucho Marx to Freud, to examine what it’s like to feel Jewish, even when you’re not.
Sponsored by Dangoor Education
We are a people with the baggage of millennia. The practice and tradition contained in our book of books concerning fundamental life lessons are often forgotten or misunderstood. Rabbi Dr Raphael Zarum interviews Rabbi Joseph Dweck, a leading religious voice in Anglo-Jewry today, on his interpretations of the biblical prophets.
Junior doctors turned best-selling authors, Rachel Clarke and Adam Kay, offer poignant, honest – at times hilarious – accounts of their experiences as NHS medics.
Rachel Clarke, who now works in end-of-life care, tells of her ongoing passion for a health service imperilled by bureaucratic cock-ups, while award-winning writer and performer Adam Kay, who has had a career change, hurtles from comedy to tragedy in his stunning exposé of the topsy-turvy world of the junior doctor.
The West has seen a rising tide of populist and anti-political feeling, resulting in Brexit and Trump. Eliane Glaser scrutinises this new wave of populism, looking at how we got here and where we're going, advocating the need to return to three pillars of political philosophy that have become dirty words: ideology, authority, and the state.
As Leonard Cohen has written, ‘there’s a blaze of light in every word’. Words shape our personal identities, our relationships and our societies. They are the crux of all human interactions. The relationship between writer, translator and reader is explicated by award-winning poet Sophie Herxheimer, translator Ros Schwartz and publisher Cécile Menon.