Remembering My Good Friends: An Autobiography - Hardcover

Weidenfeld, George

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 006017286X ISBN 13: 9780060172862

Publisher: Harpercollins, 1995

Synopsis

Reveals the life story of Lord George Weidenfeld, chronicling his flight from 1939 Nazi Vienna, his efforts with BBC during the war, and his rise to a major figure in international publishing, business, and media.

About this title

Synopsis

Lord Weidenfeld's autobiography is a political and cultural history of post-war Britain, as well as a portrait of the many characters he has known in political, business and social circles. A.J.P. Taylor, Woodrow Wyatt, the Longfords, Peter Ustinov, the Churchills, Isaiah Berlin, Kim Philby, Cyril Connolly, Harold Wilson, the Marks and Spencer clan and Harold Nicolson are just the tip of the iceberg. Weidenfeld left Vienna in his youth under the shadow of Nazism, and found his way to Britain. Having set up as a publisher with Nigel Nicolson, he married Jane Sieff of the Marks & Spencer clan and was embraced into upper-class Jewish circles, through which he became involved in the setting-up of the new Israel in the late 1940s. He was closely involved with Harold Wilson and his court, for whom he "networked" - his second wife was Barbara Skelton, once married to Cyril Connolly. Publishing and socializing in the US led him to his third wife, an American, Sandra Whitney Payson, and to his involvement with Getty, who became his partner in publishing. One of the central concerns of Weidenfeld's life has been an involvement with Israel.

His other concerns have been in helping to improve relations between German and Jews, in founding a chain of post-graduate colleges throughout Europe, and in fund-raising for Oxford University and the arts.

From the Back Cover

George Weidenfeld escaped Nazi Vienna and arrived in Britain as a penniless refugee at the age of nineteen. In this autobiography he conjures up a vivid picture of his assimilation into English society, the evolution of the book publishing firm of Weidenfeld & Nicolson, his one-year sabbatical as political advisor to President Weizmann of Israel and his close association with Harold Wilson.

During the last sixty years, George Weidenfeld's extraordinary breadth of interests and ideas, combined with his gift for friendship, has brought him into contact with many of the fascinating people of the postwar era. A cultural impresario of legend, his sharply perceptive observations about the many and varied experiences of his political, social and professional lives make this a fascinating cultural history as well as a riveting autobiography.

‘'Remembering My Good Friends' is a real curate's of rabbi's egg of a book, but the things in it are good in the moral and uplifting sense, and good in the sense of being unputdownable’
GREY GOWRIE,' Daily Telegraph '

‘The enormous portrait gallery mounted in this book will intrigue all observers of the contemporary world’
RAYMOND CARR,' Sunday Telegraph '

‘One of the finest volumes of memoirs I have ever read’
GERALD KAUFMAN

Edition details

• Publisher: Harpercollins
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 006017286X
• ISBN 13: 9780060172862
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1