Jonathan Saul Freedland (born 25 February 1967) is a British journalist who writes a weekly column for ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
''. He presents
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
's contemporary history series ''The Long View''. Freedland also writes thrillers, mainly under the pseudonym Sam Bourne, and has written a play, ''Jews. In Their Own Words'', performed in 2022 at the Royal Court Theatre, London.
Early life
The youngest of three children and the only son of a
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
Hampstead
Hampstead () is an area in London, which lies northwest of Charing Cross, and extends from Watling Street, the A5 road (Roman Watling Street) to Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland. The area forms the northwest part of the Lon ...
, London. As a child, Freedland periodically accompanied his father for broadcasting work. On one occasion, his father was interviewing Eric Morecambe, who comically assumed the 10 year-old Freedland was married. After a gap year working on a
kibbutz
A kibbutz ( he, קִבּוּץ / , lit. "gathering, clustering"; plural: kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming h ...
in Israel with the
Labour Zionist
Labor Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת סוֹצְיָאלִיסְטִית, ) or socialist Zionism ( he, תְּנוּעָת הָעַבוֹדָה, label=none, translit=Tnuʽat haʽavoda) refers to the left-wing, socialist variation of Zionism. ...
Habonim Dror
Habonim Dror ( he, הַבּוֹנִים דְּרוֹר, "the builders–freedom") is the evolution of two Jewish Labour Zionist youth movements that merged in 1982.
Habonim ( he, הַבּוֹנִים, "the builders") was founded in 1929 in the U ...
Wadham College, Oxford
Wadham College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is located in the centre of Oxford, at the intersection of Broad Street and Parks Road.
Wadham College was founded in 1610 by Dorothy W ...
. While at Oxford, he was editor of '' Cherwell'', the student newspaper.
Journalism
Freedland began his
Fleet Street
Fleet Street is a major street mostly in the City of London. It runs west to east from Temple Bar at the boundary with the City of Westminster to Ludgate Circus at the site of the London Wall and the River Fleet from which the street was na ...
career at the short-lived ''
Sunday Correspondent
''The Sunday Correspondent'' was a short-lived British weekly national broadsheet newspaper. The newspaper first appeared on 17 September 1989; the title ceased publication with the last issue on 25 November 1990. It was edited by Peter Cole for ...
''. In 1990 he joined the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...
as a news reporter across radio and television, including for ''
The World at One
''The World at One'', or ''WATO'' ("what-oh") for short, is BBC Radio 4's long-running lunchtime news and current affairs programme, produced by BBC News, which is currently broadcast from 13:00 to 13:45 from Monday to Friday. The programme de ...
'' and '' Today'' on Radio 4. In 1992, he was awarded the
Laurence Stern fellowship The Stern-Bryan fellowship is an annual summer internship program for British journalists at ''The Washington Post''. The internship was established in honour of ''Post'' journalist, Laurence Stern. A fund for the program is managed by the Nationa ...
on ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'', serving as a staff writer on national news. He was Washington Correspondent for ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' from 1993 until 1997, when he returned to London as an editorial writer and columnist.
Between 2002 and 2004, Freedland was an occasional columnist for the ''
Daily Mirror
The ''Daily Mirror'' is a British national daily tabloid. Founded in 1903, it is owned by parent company Reach plc. From 1985 to 1987, and from 1997 to 2002, the title on its masthead was simply ''The Mirror''. It had an average daily print ...
'' and from 2005 to 2007 he wrote a weekly column for the London ''
Evening Standard
The ''Evening Standard'', formerly ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), also known as the ''London Evening Standard'', is a local free daily newspaper in London, England, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format.
In October 2009, after be ...
''. He writes a monthly column for ''
The Jewish Chronicle
''The'' () is a grammatical Article (grammar), article in English language, English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite ...
''. He has also been published in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', ''
The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'', ''
Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...
'' and ''
The New Republic
''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hum ...
''.
Freedland was named 'Columnist of the Year' in the 2002 '' What the Papers Say'' awards and in 2008 was awarded the David Watt Prize for Journalism, in recognition of his essay "Bush's Amazing Achievement", published in ''The New York Review of Books''. Nominated on seven occasions, Freedland was awarded a special Orwell Prize in May 2014 for his journalism. In 2016, he won the "Commentariat of the Year" prize at the Comment Awards.
Freedland was executive editor of the opinion section of ''The Guardian'' from May 2014 till early 2016 and continues to write a Saturday column for it.
In November 2019, Freedland apologised for making a "very bad error" in falsely reporting that a shortlisted
Labour
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the labour ...
prospective parliamentary candidate had been fined for making antisemitic remarks on Facebook. He attributed the mistaken identification by confusing two lawyers with the same name to a "previously reliable Labour source" whose information he had "passed on too hastily".
Author
Freedland has published twelve books: three non-fiction works under his own name and nine novels, eight of them under the pseudonym Sam Bourne.
''Bring Home the Revolution: The case for a British Republic'' (1998), Freedland's first book, argued that Britain should reclaim the revolutionary ideals it exported to America in the 18th century, and undergo a constitutional and cultural overhaul. The book won a
W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham ( ; 25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and went to a German un ...
Award for non-fiction and was later adapted into a two-part series for BBC Television.
''Jacob's Gift'' (2005) is a memoir recounting the lives of three generations of his own Jewish family as well as exploring wider questions of identity and belonging. In 2008, he broadcast a two-part series for BBC Radio 4 – ''British Jews and the Dream of Zion'' – as well as two TV documentaries for
BBC Four
BBC Four is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was launched on 2 March 2002
: ''How to be a Good President'' and ''President Hollywood''.
'' The Righteous Men'' (2006), is a religious thriller published under the Bourne
pen name
A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name.
A pen na ...
. It is about a news reporter whose life is disrupted when his wife is kidnapped while he is reporting a story of a militia man found dead. As more murders of 'righteous men' happen across the globe, Will soon finds himself in the middle of a plot to bring about nothing less than Judgement Day.
The book was followed by another Sam Bourne title, ''The Last Testament'' (2007), set against the backdrop of the Middle East peace process. It draws on the author's experiences in that region as a reporter for over twenty years, and a ''Guardian'' newspaper sponsored dialogue which was influential in the 2003 Geneva Accords. The central character finds herself involved in a mix of the modern political situation and ancient revelations. ''The Final Reckoning'' (2008), was based on the true story of
the Avengers
Avenger, Avengers, The Avenger, or The Avengers may refer to:
Arts and entertainment In the Marvel Comics universe
* Avengers (comics), a team of superheroes
** Avengers (Marvel Cinematic Universe), a central team of protagonist superheroes o ...
: a group of
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
survivors who sought revenge against their Nazi persecutors, and just missed the peak of ''
The Sunday Times
''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...
'' best-seller list. Just before ''The Chosen One'' (2010), the fourth thriller by Sam Bourne was published in the UK, '' The Bookseller'' reported in April 2010 that
HarperCollins
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Cor ...
had signed Freedland for three more Bourne books. HarperCollins published "Pantheon" in July 2012. Freedland's sixth novel entitled "American Winter" was published in 2014 under the Sam Bourne name, but was withdrawn and reissued as ''The 3rd Woman'', published by HarperCollins in 2015 under his own name. His sixth Bourne novel, ''To Kill a President,'' was published by HarperCollins on 4 July 2017. The seventh novel under the Sam Bourne pseudonym, ''To Kill the Truth'', was published in February 2019.
The 2022 non-fiction work ''The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World'' is a life of
Rudolf Vrba
Rudolf "Rudi" Vrba (born Walter Rosenberg; 11 September 1924 – 27 March 2006) was a Slovak-Jewish biochemist who, as a teenager in 1942, was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), German-occup ...
, one of the first Jews to escape from the
Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
A leading liberal Zionist in the UK, he wrote in 2012 that he uses the word ''
Zionism
Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after ''Zion'') is a Nationalism, nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is ...
'' infrequently, as the word has been misunderstood and has become defined as right-wing. On the
2014 Israel–Gaza conflict
The 2014 Gaza War, also known as Operation Protective Edge ( he, מִבְצָע צוּק אֵיתָן, translit=Miv'tza Tzuk Eitan, ),
was a military operation launched by Israel on 8 July 2014 in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territories, Pale ...
, he believes that military action perpetuates conflict and has called for negotiations to end the cycles of violence. He defends
Israel's right to exist
The legitimacy of the State of Israel has been questioned by a number of countries and individuals since the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948. Specifically, it concerns the matter of whether the authority of Israel over the area in ...
, but hopes that Israel will recognise the 'high price' paid by
Palestinians
Palestinians ( ar, الفلسطينيون, ; he, פָלַסְטִינִים, ) or Palestinian people ( ar, الشعب الفلسطيني, label=none, ), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs ( ar, الفلسطينيين العرب, label=non ...
.
Freedland has accused the Labour Party in the UK of being in denial on the issue of
antisemitism
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
. He has urged the left to treat Jews "the same way you'd treat any other minority". He has also commented on the perceived antisemitic expressions of Palestinians with whom
Corbyn Corbyn is a surname and a given name. Notable people with the name include:
Surname
* Frederick Corbyn (1791–1853), British surgeon in India
* Jeremy Corbyn (born 1949), British politician and leader of the Labour Party 2015–2020
* Piers Corbyn ...
has associated and expressed the view that many of the Labour Party's new members were hostile to Jews. Freedland has attracted some criticism for his views.
Jewish heritage
Freedland is a supporter of projects that seek to preserve Jewish identity and heritage. He has frequently written about the importance of both his faith and his cultural heritage. He has also been active in campaigns to save
British Jewish
British Jews (often referred to collectively as British Jewry or Anglo-Jewry) are British citizens who identify as Jewish. The number of people who identified as Jews in the United Kingdom rose by just under 4% between 2001 and 2021.
History
...
heritage.
Other issues
Freedland was critical of the role of the local authority and management company in the period leading up to the
Grenfell Tower fire
On 14 June 2017, a high-rise fire broke out in the 24-storey Grenfell Tower block of flats in North Kensington, West London, at 00:54 BST and burned for 60 hours. 72 people died, two later in hospital, with more than 70 injured and 223 escapin ...
. He believes that the British public are tired of the duration and impact of
austerity
Austerity is a set of political-economic policies that aim to reduce government budget deficits through spending cuts, tax increases, or a combination of both. There are three primary types of austerity measures: higher taxes to fund spend ...
. He is concerned that the impact of
Hurricane Harvey
Hurricane Harvey was a devastating Category 4 hurricane that made landfall on Texas and Louisiana in August 2017, causing catastrophic flooding and more than 100 deaths. It is tied with 2005's Hurricane Katrina as the costliest t ...
in the United States received more publicity than more serious events in Asia. Freedland is also concerned about the war in Yemen and the role of western governments in supplying weapons to Saudi Arabia. He maintains that reduced police funding enables terrorism in the United Kingdom and blames the large Internet companies for not preventing the spread of terrorist material.
Personal life
Freedland is married to Sarah Peters, a radio and podcast producer. They have two sons, Jacob and Sam, and conform to
Masorti Judaism
Conservative Judaism, known as Masorti Judaism outside North America, is a Jewish religious movement which regards the authority of ''halakha'' (Jewish law) and traditions as coming primarily from its people and community through the generat ...
. He is a governor of Simon Marks Jewish Primary School in Stamford Hill.
Bibliography
Books
Non-fiction
* ''
Bring Home the Revolution
''Bring Home the Revolution: The Case For a British Republic'' is a non-fiction book written by Jonathan Freedland and originally published in 1998 by Fourth Estate. Part travel book, part political and sociological examination of American societ ...
: The Case for a British Republic'' (Fourth Estate, 1998)
* ''Jacob's Gift: A Journey into the Heart of Belonging'' (Hamish Hamilton, 2005),
* ''The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World'' (John Murray, 2022)
Fiction
* ''The Righteous Men'' (HarperCollins, 2006)
* ''The Last Testament'', published elsewhere as ''The Jerusalem Secret'' (HarperCollins, 2007)
* ''The Final Reckoning'' (HarperCollins, 2008)
* ''The Chosen One'' (HarperCollins, 2010)
* ''Pantheon'' (HarperCollins, 5 July 2012)
* ''The 3rd Woman'' (Harper 4 August 2015) (first published as by J. Freedland, not Sam Bourne)
* ''To Kill the President'' (HarperCollins, 12 June 2017)
* ''To Kill the Truth'' (Quercus, 21 February 2019)
* ''To Kill a Man'' (Quercus, 19 March 2020)
Articles
* "Trump's Chaver in Jerusalem" (review of
Anshel Pfeffer
Anshel Pfeffer (Hebrew: אנשיל פפר, born 22 June 1973) is a British-born Israeli journalist. He is a senior correspondent and columnist for '' Haaretz'', covering military, Jewish and international affairs, and Israel correspondent for ''Th ...
, ''Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu'', Basic Books, 2018), '' New York Review of Books'', vol. LXV, no 13 (16 August 2018), pp. 32–34. "As Pfeffer concludes, 'His etanyahu'sultimate legacy will not be a more secure nation, but a deeply fractured Israeli society, living behind walls.'"
The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...