alain elkann interviews
Erel Margalit

Erel Margalit

Erel Margalit founded Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) over 24 years ago, and is one of the chief architects of the startup nation, bringing innovation and entrepreneurial leadership to Israel’s most pressing political, economic, and social challenges. Chosen for the...

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Amnon Shashua

Amnon Shashua

Professor Amnon Shashua is CEO and CTO of Mobileye, a world leader in collision avoidance systems and autonomous driving technologies, and Senior Vice President of Intel Corporation, one of the world’s largest semiconductor chip makers. Professor Shashua holds the...

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Bill Sherman

Bill Sherman

Bill Sherman is the new Director of the Warburg Institute. Displaced from Hamburg to London in the 1930s under the pressure of Nazism, the Warburg is a gift to London in perpetuity. In 1944 it became part of the University of London, and since 1994 the Warburg has...

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Achim Borchardt-Hume

Achim Borchardt-Hume

We go to see Achim Borchardt-Hume at Tate Modern where he is the Director of Exhibitions and Programmes. On this date in 1881, 25th October, Pablo Picasso was born. Achim Borchardt-Hume is the curator of  Tate Modern’s forthcoming EY EXHIBITION: PICASSO 1932 - LOVE,...

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Carl Bernstein

Carl Bernstein

Carl Bernstein is an American investigative journalist and author. Carl, why is it your motto that a reporter has to give the best obtainable version of the truth? That’s what reporting is. Good reporting is the best obtainable version of the truth. This is the...

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Stanley Johnson

Stanley Johnson

The British politician and author Stanley Johnson is an expert on environmental and population issues.  As a United Kingdom (UK) Member of the European Parliament (MEP) he was also a dedicated believer in the United Europe concept and he...

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Roger Cohen

Roger Cohen

"With Donald Trump we are playing with fire." Roger Cohen is a journalist and author who joined The New York Times in 1990. He worked as a foreign correspondent in fifteen different countries before becoming acting foreign editor on September...

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Caroline Moorehead

Caroline Moorehead

Caroline Moorehead is a human rights journalist and the biographer of Bertrand Russell, Freya Stark, Iris Origo,  Martha Gellhorn and Lucie de la Tour du Pin. She wrote two bestselling books on the French Resistance, and has now turned her attention to the antifascist...

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Simon Sebag Montefiore

Simon Sebag Montefiore

Dr. Montefiore is an historian of Russia and the Middle East. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he has been awarded the Literary Prize Lupicaia del Terriccio 2017 for his book ‘The Romanovs: 1613-1918’. He is the author of ‘Catherine the Great and Potemkin:...

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Jonathan Taplin

Jonathan Taplin

Jon Taplin wrote the book Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Have Cornered Culture and What It Means For All Of Us. The Guardian newspaper review described the book’s central argument as being that “the titans of the digital age frequently...

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Tamara Chalabi

Tamara Chalabi

Life in Iraq today is archaic and dysfunctional - and on show at the 57th Venice Biennale. Tamara Chalabi is co-founder and Chair of the Ruya Foundation for Contemporary Culture in Iraq. She is co-curator of Archaic at the National Pavilion of Iraq for the 57th...

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Athene Donald

Athene Donald

The physicist at the head of Cambridge University's Churchill College has concerns about Brexit. Professor Dame Athene Donald, DBE, FRS is Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge University, where she is Master of Churchill College. She served as the University...

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Staffan de Mistura

Staffan de Mistura

Staffan de Mistura is the United Nations Special Envoy tasked with seeking a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Syria. We republish this interview from December 2014 on April 7th 2017 as President Donald Trump orders air strikes on a target in Syria. What is your...

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Gerard Baker

Gerard Baker

Gerard Baker is Editor-in-Chief of Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal. He served as Deputy Editor-in-Chief between 2009 and 2013. Previously, he was U.S. editor and an assistant editor of the Times of London. In 1994, he joined the Financial Times as Tokyo...

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Pasquale Terracciano

Pasquale Terracciano

His Excellency Pasquale Terracciano was appointed Italian Ambassador to London in 2013. Alain made this Classic Interview in December of that year, when he had been in post for just 6 months. Is London the Capital of the World? Pasquale Terracciano, you have been...

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Jean d’Ormesson

Jean d’Ormesson

Very sadly Jean d'Ormesson died on December 5th 2017. We send our condolences to his family and republish this interview in his memory. "The real victim of populism is democracy." Various countries of the world are living in a situation of increasing populism. In...

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Amit Sood

Amit Sood

Combatting stress, the global epidemic of the 21st Century. Dr. Amit Sood was born and raised in Bhopal, India. He is a Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic, and he is committed to decreasing suffering and increasing happiness. Dr. Sood is the author of The Mayo...

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John Micklethwait

John Micklethwait

The Editor-in-Chief of Bloomberg News has an extraordinary platform of observation on what’s happening in the world. What do you think at Bloomberg about the new President Trump’s aggressive attitude towards journalists and the press? Do you think the freedom of the...

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Peter Lantos

Peter Lantos

We republish this Classic Interview in recognition of Holocaust Memorial Day 2017. The interview with Peter Lantos took place at the London Library in St James's Square in London.  He is a Holocaust survivor from Hungary and has lived in London for 45 years. He writes...

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Magdi Yacoub

Magdi Yacoub

Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub, OM, FRS, Founder and President of Chain of Hope, is one of the world’s greatest, and most famous, surgeons. Born in Egypt in 1935, he studied medicine in Cairo and then London, becoming a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Harefield...

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Hanif Kureishi

Hanif Kureishi

Hanif Kureishi is the author of novels such as 'The Buddha of Suburbia' and 'Intimacy', story collections, plays and screenplays. 'The Buddha of Suburbia' was made into a BBC TV series with a soundtrack by David Bowie. 'My Beautiful Laundrette',  a story about a gay...

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Corinne Flick

Corinne Flick

Dr. Corinne Michaela Flick studied both law and literature, and is Founder and Chair of the Convoco! Foundation. Dr. Flick is Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Aspen Institute Germany, Co-Founder of the Friends of the Bavarian State Library, Munich, and a member...

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Hannah Rothschild

Hannah Rothschild

The Improbability of Love You are quite eclectic and your work has ranged from documentary films, to banking, to philanthropy, to biography, and now to a novel. Why do you think you have many different facets? I have that kind of restless, inquisitive mind. It’s...

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Shimon Peres

Shimon Peres

With great sadness we learn of the death of Shimon Peres, one of Israel's great leaders - a man who devoted his life to serving his country and the world. 28th September, 2016 "Looking back the only mistake we made was not dreaming big enough. Let's dream big, let's...

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Natalia Indrimi

Natalia Indrimi

Primo Levi opened a universal platform with his reflections on human nature. You are the Director and one of the founding members of the Primo Levi Center in New York. What is the purpose of this center? The Center was born in 1998 to sustain the conversation and...

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Ik-Joong Kang

Ik-Joong Kang

Artists are the leaders of the 21st Century. Ik-Joong Kang is one of South Korea’s most renowned and celebrated multimedia artists. His works are poignant symbols of hope for reunification, particularly of North and South Korea. This September at Robilant+Voena’s...

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Eike Schmidt

Eike Schmidt

“In Florence exhibitions on old masters are more successful than exhibitions on contemporary artists!” Eike Schmidt was appointed Director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence by Dario Franceschini, the Italian Minister of Culture. He is the first non-Italian to be...

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Hans Rauscher

Hans Rauscher

Hans Rauscher is an author and a journalist at Der Standard, an Austrian national daily broadsheet newspaper that has been published in Vienna since 1988. Austria will re-run a Presidential election on October 2 that could produce the first far-Right Head of State in...

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Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel

We re-publish this 2014 interview with Elie Wiesel in grateful commemoration of his life and his humanity. Elie has been a longtime friend  and an example of Jewish life. I will remember his voice, his words, his love for literature. When together we used to speak...

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Mark Regev

Mark Regev

H.E. Mark Regev is the Ambassador of Israel to the United Kingdom since April 2016. He was the chief spokesman for the Prime Minister of Israel from 2007 to 2015. You have been Ambassador in the UK for a few months and had to face the Livingstone affair, when the...

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// FEATURED

Money Must Stay in the Family

The plot of Money Must Stay in the Family, unfolds around the family matriarch’s last will and traces the story of an upper class Jewish family from Turin, the fictional Ottolenghis. The multigenerational saga begins with the flight from Mussolini’s Racial Laws of 1938 and continues with the arrival in the Upper West Side of Manhattan and the dispersion from New York to Rome, Paris, Tuscany, South America, and Jerusalem.

// PUBLICATIONS

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