Jonathan Freedland

Jonathan Saul Freedland

Freedland at Chatham House in 2013
Born 25 February 1967[1]
Alma mater Wadham College, Oxford
Occupation Journalist
Spouse(s) Sarah Peters[1]
Website
jonathanfreedland.com
twitter.com/freedland
guardian.co.uk/profile/jonathanfreedland

Jonathan Saul Freedland (born 25 February 1967)[1] is a British journalist, who writes a weekly column for The Guardian and a monthly piece for The Jewish Chronicle. He is also a regular contributor to The New York Times and The New York Review of Books, and presents BBC Radio 4's contemporary history series, The Long View.

He 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,[2] in recognition of his essay 'Bush's Amazing Achievement', published in The New York Review of Books.[3] Freedland also writes best-selling thrillers under the pseudonym Sam Bourne.

Life and journalism

The son of Michael Freedland, a biographer and journalist, and Sara Hocherman,[4] he was educated at University College School, a boys' independent school in Hampstead, London, and at Wadham College, Oxford.

The younger Freedland began his Fleet Street career at the short-lived Sunday Correspondent. In 1990 he joined the BBC, working as a news reporter across radio and television, appearing most often on The World at One and Today on Radio 4. In the summer of 1992, he was awarded the Laurence Stern fellowship[5] on The Washington Post, serving as a staff writer on the national news section. He became Washington Correspondent The Guardian in 1993, remaining in that post until 1997 when he returned to London as an editorial writer and columnist. 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 Award for non-fiction and was later adapted into a two-part series for BBC Television.

Between 2002 and 2004, Freedland was an occasional columnist for the Daily Mirror and from 2005 to 2007 he wrote a weekly column for the London Evening Standard. He has also been published in Newsweek and The New Republic magazines and appears regularly on radio and 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.[6] 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: How to be a Good President[7] and President Hollywood.

In March 2014, it emerged that Freedland from May will assume the role of executive editor, opinion with responsibilities for the comment section of the newspaper and the development of longer articles for the paper and the website.[8] A leading liberal Zionist in the UK,[9] he wrote in 2012 that he only uses the word Zionism infrequently. He explained:

“ That is because the word has become so misunderstood, so freighted with excess baggage, that it has become all but impossible to deploy it without extensive explanation and qualification. Most of the time, it is best avoided. Part of the trouble is that a single variant – right-wing Zionism – has come to stand for the whole.[10] ”

Nominated on seven occasions, Freedland was awarded a special Orwell Prize in May 2014.for his journalism.[11][12]

Thriller writer

Freedland has published six books: two non-fiction works and four thrillers under the pseudonym Sam Bourne. The Righteous Men, published in 2006, is a religious thriller published under the Bourne 'nom de plume'. The book made a brief appearance in the gossip columns when a damning review by Michael Dibdin,[13] originally written for The Guardian, appeared instead in The Times. The Guardian's ombudsman[14] discovered that when Dibdin originally submitted his review to The Guardian he offered to withdraw it if it were deemed too awkward – an offer the Editor Alan Rusbridger accepted.

In June 2006, The Righteous Men was picked as a Richard and Judy Summer Read and soon rose to the top of the The Sunday Times best-sellers' list. It stayed on the list for several months and has now sold more than half a million copies in the UK; it has been translated into 30 languages.

The book was followed a year later by another Sam Bourne title, The Last Testament, this time set against the backdrop of the Middle East peace process, and in 2008 by The Final Reckoning, based on the true story of the Avengers: a group of Holocaust survivors who sought revenge against their Nazi persecutors. The Final Reckoning just missed the peak of The Sunday Times best-seller list. The Chosen One, the fourth thriller by Sam Bourne, was published in the UK in 2010. In April 2010, The Bookseller reported that HarperCollins had signed up Freedland for three more Bourne books, describing the author as "the UK's bestselling thriller writer with sales of well over one million…in less than five years."[15]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "'FREEDLAND, Jonathan Saul', Who's Who 2012, A & C Black, 2012; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2011 ; online edn". Retrieved 9 November 2012.
  2. ↑ "Awards 2008". The Guardian (London). 23 June 2009. Retrieved 22 June 2011.
  3. ↑ Freedland, Jonathan. "Bush's Amazing Achievement". Bush's Amazing Achievement. The New York Review of Books.
  4. ↑ Jonathan Freedland "In death – as in life – my mother was rescued by love", The Guardian, 18 May 2012
  5. ↑ "List of previous fellows". Laurence Stern Fellowship. City University.
  6. ↑ Anthony Juluius "The bearers of memory", The Guardian, 19 February 2005
  7. ↑ Freedland, Jonathan (14 September 2008). "How to be a good president". Documentary (BBC).
  8. ↑ Jason Deans "Janine Gibson appointed editor-in-chief of theguardian.com", theguardian.com, 7 March 2014
  9. ↑ Antony Lerman "The End of Liberal Zionism: Israel’s Move to the Right Challenges Diaspora Jews", New York Times, 22 August 2014
  10. ↑ Jonathan Freedland "Yearning for the same land", New Statesman, 18 July 2012
  11. ↑ Martin Williams "Two Guardian journalists win Orwell prize for journalism", theguardian.com, 21 May 2014
  12. ↑ Katie Rosseinsky "Double win for Alan Johnson as This Boy receives the Orwell Prize", Daily Telegraph, 21 May 2014
  13. ↑ Michael Dibdin, Conspiring against credibility, The Times, 11 February 2006
  14. ↑ Ian Mayes "Open Door", The Guardian, 10 April 2006
  15. ↑ Page, Benedicte. "Three Sam Bournes for HC". Three Sam Bournes for HC. The Bookseller. Retrieved 22 June 2011.

Books

External links