Notting Hill Editions was launched in 2011 to revive the art of essay writing, producing elegant, small books containing such subject matter as Deborah Levy’s response to George Orwell’s Why I Write. Now, they have widened the format, with Alison Leslie Gold’s Found and Lost. Gold is best known for co-writing Anne Frank Remembered with Miep Gies, who helped hide Anne Frank and her family … Continue reading Jewish Chronicle: Found and Lost review

Winston Churchill’s half-smoked cigar sold for $12,000 at a US auction in October. A hand-written note by Albert Einstein on the topic of happiness (“a quiet and modest life brings more joy than a pursuit of success bound with constant unrest,” he wrote) went for $1.5 million in Jerusalem. In London, Audrey Hepburn’s iconic blue satin sleep mask was bought for £6,250, some 50 times … Continue reading Standpoint Magazine: Tunnel Vision

At first glance, The Attack of the 50ft Women, by Catherine Mayer, looks like a sequel to Naomi Alderman’s Baileys Prize-winning novel, The Power, about women gaining physical power over men, which in turn echoes some aspects of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian fantasy classic, A Handmaid’s Tale. But, far from being a fantasy, this hard-hitting, non-fiction book shows how dystopian our reality still is for women … Continue reading Jewish Chronicle: The Attack of the 50ft Women – Driving on equality street

On a recent visit to the Royal Academy, I noticed a tall, elegantly dressed man who spent quite some time admiring a square object attached to the wall. I wondered whether to tell him that far from being Russian avant-garde art, which was the theme of the exhibition, it was in fact the temperature and humidity control box. Many visitors to Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 … Continue reading Standpoint Magazine: Ironies of Ideology

Public opinion on journalists has always been influenced by how they – or should I say we – are represented in novels, films and popular culture. In her PhD-thesis-turned-book, Sarah Lonsdale traces fictional and real journalists throughout the twentieth century. From swashbuckling Edwardian alcoholics with “special ink for hot countries which would not dry up” to the post-war alienated outsider, Lonsdale analyses how journalists have … Continue reading Times Literary Supplement: Of lesbians and constipation

In this, his first novel, Gerald Jacobs takes us to the Baghdad of the early 20th century, where Jews made up a quarter of the population, and lived amicably alongside the city’s Arab population. Immediately, we are reminded of the timeless traditions and idiosyncrasies of Jewish communities. One protagonist eats non-kosher meat, then “prays for a forgiveness to the God in whose existence he did … Continue reading Standpoint Magazine: A diaspora of pain and joy

Nina Willner was only five years old when she learnt that the reason she had never met her grandparents, aunts and uncles was because they were trapped behind “a curtain” in East Germany. “Someone, I thought, simply needed to pull that sheet of fabric to the side and let those poor people out,” is how she recounts her immediate thoughts as a little girl growing … Continue reading Jewish Chronicle: Forty Autumns

A new production of The Nose, Shostakovich’s opera based on Gogol’s mesmerisingly surreal short story, was part of this season at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. A Tarkovsky retrospective was held in Shoreditch. Any moment now, I expect to get invited to a poetry slam riffing on Mayakovsky. The Nose, one of Gogol’s Petersburg Tales, tells the story of Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov, who … Continue reading Standpoint Magazine: Golden Gogol

There were ten men in an audience of about a hundred at How To Date a Feminist, a new play by Samantha Ellis (the author of How To Be a Heroine) at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston. As a feminist, I was naturally curious to find out what it means to date me. But it quickly became clear that the feminist in question in Ellis’s play … Continue reading Times Literary Supplement: How to date a feminist

Hot Milk, the book for which Deborah Levy has been nominated for this year’s Man Booker Prize, explores hypochondria and the troubled relationship between a mother and daughter. It is characterised by a wicked sense of humour and sublime rhythm. Previously nominated for Swimming Home (2011), a novel on the insidious harm depression can have on apparently well-turned-out people, Levy is the only female British … Continue reading Jewish Chronicle: An interview with Deborah Levy

In Newton’s Apple and Other Myths about Science, twenty-eight academics refute some of the most pervasive myths about science. Isaac Newton discovered gravity, when he sat in the orchard and an apple fell on his head, according to one of the most famous stories of scientific discovery. During his life, Newton told the apple anecdote four times, and it only became well known much later, … Continue reading Times Literary Supplement: Big flat lies

Fine wine and rare stamps have been used to pass on wealth for many generations. Janet Yellen, who cautiously keeps interest rates down at the US Federal Reserve, owns a formidable collection of stamps. Friedrich Engels, who co-wrote The Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx, had personal assets that included 924 bottles of claret, 588 bottles of port and, of course, 156 bottles of champagne, as … Continue reading Money Observer: On fine wine, rare stamps and coins

Through conversations with the people he meets in Ukraine, Tim Judah provides a unique picture of what is happening on the ground in wartime. Crisscrossing the country, he explores the impact of the ongoing conflict, with a focus on the lives of the majority of people, who are caught between westward-leaning nationalists and Russian-backed rebel forces. The book is not a blow-by-blow account of events … Continue reading Standpoint: Clearing the Fog of War

Tucked away between office buildings by Euston station is where I found the Camden People’s Theatre. It’s a little place with colourful bunting, a cheerful selection of chairs and flowery plastic tablecloths. It’s the kind of theatre where you can buy a packet of crisps in the interval, rather than wasabi peas. I went to see a talk and two plays that were part of Whose … Continue reading Times Literary Supplement: Whose London is it anyway?

What makes a genius? Since at least the 19th century, some have said it is down to genetics, while others have argued that upbringing is decisive. More recently, the idea that genius rests on sheer hard work — the “10,000 hours” thesis popularised by the writer Malcolm Gladwell — has gained currency. The latest contribution to the debate comes from the journalist and travel writer … Continue reading Financial Times: How to create a golden age

When short stories were still widely published in magazines, they had the capacity to react to unfolding events, writes Philip Hensher, the novelist and critic who edited these two volumes. Now the principal outlets for short story writers are no longer periodicals — apart from Standpoint and a few others — but competitions. “The dullest short stories I read from the last fifteen years were … Continue reading Standpoint Magazine: The Story Of The Short Story

One summer afternoon in 1862, the mathematician Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) took the daughters of his dean at Christ Church, Oxford, on a boat trip down the Thames. He entertained the three sisters, Alice, Lorina and Edith Liddell, with the whimsical story of Alice’s adventures in a magical world entered through a rabbit hole. On their return to Oxford, Alice asked Carroll to write down … Continue reading Standpoint Magazine: Further Adventures

“Storybook ranch houses”, built in the 1950s and 1960s, are a feature of neighbourhoods in the American south-west. The first photograph above was taken in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where such dreamy, pastel-coloured homes stand in contradiction to the desert that surrounds them. The photographer KayLynn Deveney was born in Albuquerque, where her interest in storybook homes began. She went on to study journalism and photography, … Continue reading Financial Times: ‘All You Can Lose is Your Heart’ by KayLynn Deveney

Guy de Maupassant is considered the greatest short story writer in French literature. He is often said to have defined the modern short story and influenced the likes of Chekhov, Maugham, Babel and O. Henry. In France, his work is studied at secondary schools and universities, as it is in England. But it is probably true to say that in the English-speaking world generally he … Continue reading Standpoint Magazine: Found In Translation

The first time I came across the Israeli short-story writer Etgar Keret was through a comment he made about Franz Kafka. When Kafka died in 1924, he left his diaries, manuscripts and letters with his friend Max Brod, and ordered him to burn them unread. Instead, Brod released The Trial, The Castle and Amerika, turning Kafka into one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. But many manuscripts … Continue reading Standpoint Magazine: Israel’s Impish Ice-Breaker

In his previous book, The Shallows, Nicholas Carr argued that the Internet diminishes our power to concentrate and contemplate. Now he turns his eye to automation: “If you want to understand the human consequences of automation”, he writes, “the first place to look is up”. Air travel has been at the vanguard of automation, and it has become safer on the whole. By the same … Continue reading Times Literary Supplement: Engage neutral

He may be America’s greatest living comedian, but if you relied on British television you might never have heard of Jackie Mason. In this country, he must be the most underrated stand-up in the business. You have to see him live — and the opportunities are getting rarer. Three years ago Jackie Mason came to London on a farewell tour. This summer he returned to … Continue reading Standpoint Magazine: Underrated – Jackie Mason

Notes on a Voice: Marina Gerner pins down the work of a Nobel prize-winning novelist who revealed the inside through the outside “All I had to do was be there with buckets to catch it,” Saul Bellow said of his breakthrough novel “The Adventures of Augie March” (1953). Augie is a dreamy idealist with a drifting mind. The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, he grew up … Continue reading The Economist’s Intelligent Life Magazine: Saul Bellow’s Introspection