In this special edition of Sounds Jewish, direct from Jewish Book Week in central London, Jason Solomons is joined by a veritable festival
of guests including Maureen Lipman, Edmund de Waal and Henry Goodman.
First up, having played to a packed house, is a man whose day job is not as a writer but as a ceramicist: Edmund de Waal, the acclaimed author of The Hare with Amber Eyes retraces the history of his family through an inherited collection of tiny Japanese figurines. Raised as an Anglican, his story is nevertheless intensely Jewish – moving from the shtetls of eastern Europe to the cafes of Paris and Vienna, culminating in the Holocaust.
Maureen Lipman tells Jason how she finally recovered her love of reading six years after the death of her husband, the playwright and screenwriter – and author of the legendary TV drama The Bar Mitzvah Boy – Jack Rosenthal.
Next comes the tireless civil rights campaigner Anat Hoffman, whose struggle for women's rights and religious equality in Israel has won her
plenty of admirers – and no shortage of enemies. She tells of the solace she finds in reading the Israeli novelist and sage, Amos Oz.
The Guardian's very own Dorian Lynskey discusses his new book on protest music, 33 Revolutions Per Minute – and reveals the Jews who put politics into pop.
And Jason hears from Bernard "Buddy" Elias – the last surviving relative of Anne Frank. He says he still remembers playing with his young cousin in their grandmother's house.
Sounds Jewish is produced by the Jewish Community Centre for London
