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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
In honour of the Blenheim Art Foundation presenting Michelangelo Pistoletto at Blenheim Palace, in a solo exhibition running from 15th September – 31st December 2016 celebrating the extensive oeuvre of the Italian artist, we republish this classic interview. ...
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...
"In the USA we are recognised as a food supplement and as a provider of massage. Ayurvedic medicine is the medicine of comfort, leading to cure and preservation of life." Dr Doja Purkit, MD BSc DSc MBRCP is an Ayurvedic doctor who gained his degrees in India at Jaipur...
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...
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...
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...
It was with great sadness that we learnt of the death of Umberto Eco on February 19th, 2016 at the age of 84. We remember him with huge admiration. He was a magnificent intellectual and a great Italian who made Italians proud of being Italian all over the world. We...
On a rainy April afternoon I met with Jonas Mekas in a little bar in the Lower East Side next to the Anthology Film Archives (AFA), the institution that he founded and has run for very many years. The Anthology Film Archives is at the corner of 2nd Avenue and 2nd...
My love for animals made me vegan. People should not buy animal products. You were a famous debutante, and then you became a vegan, interested and deeply involved in animal rights? Yes, and I also became an actress and I still do movies. I have been surrounded by...
Antisemitism is a societal disease. Professor Manuela Consonni is Director of The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism in Jerusalem Professor Consonni, can you tell us about your new prestigious role at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University as...
Faith doesn’t generate hate. Ruth Dureghello is president of Rome’s Jewish community. Last Sunday, before Pope Francis, Chief Rabbi Disegni, and the entire Roman Jewish community which had gathered at the Great Synagogue to welcome the pontiff, you said, “With this...
Mr Disegni, you were recently appointed president of MEIS (which is the foundation behind the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Holocaust) by the Minister of Cultural Heritage and Activities, Dario Franceschini. You’ve taken over from writer Riccardo Calimani...
What inspired you to launch your new magazine Cabana? What inspired me was on one hand a passion for the visual world, and on the other it was a great feeling of the type of world that was about to become mainstream visual inspiration. I clearly did not invent...
Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in London. Since July you are the new Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in London. How come you made this role your choice when you are a well-known and active photographer? Photography was and is something too...
The interview with the Patriarch took place at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. He was with a Jewish and an Arab friend. What is your role of Patriarch? The concept of Patriarch is associated with sacred history, the history of salvation that began in Mount Sinai...
My biodynamic Barolo is like my child. Director of winemaking for the Ceretto Winery. Alessandro, you are part of the third generation of Ceretto wine producers who have been making wine in the Langhe area of Piedmont since the 1930s… Yes. My grandfather Riccardo was...
Overwhelmed by Syrian refugees, as it has already been by the Palestinians for half a century, the Hashemite Kingdom is on the front line of the Syrian crisis. War in Syria, terrorism, refugee crisis, Eastern Christians ... Alain made the following interview with the...
"A New Renaissance for Medicine." Dr. Virgilio Sacchini is a surgeon who specializes in the treatment of breast cancer. He will be attending a meeting in Florence on October 15 and 16, 2015, at the Gabinetto Scientifico Letterario G.P. Vieusseux. The meeting will be...
Colin B. Bailey is the Director of The Morgan Library & Museum. He was Director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, before that Deputy Director and Chief Curator at The Frick Collection, and he is a specialist of 18th-19th century French art, especially...
"To enter the religious world is to move from living in black and white to living in colour." Timothy Radcliffe OP is a Dominican friar and served as Master of the Dominicans, the Order of Preachers, for nine years. He inspires in his addresses and retreats in all...
The way to solve problems is through food. Alice Waters, at what stage of your life do you feel you are? I am in a very reflective place, because I know I have an incredible opportunity and I don’t want to push to make something happen. I want to go to the place where...
Walking Together. Rabbi Elio Toaff recently died at the age of 99 in Rome, on April 19th. We made a book together titled Essere Ebreo in which he explored with me what it means To be a Jew in the form of a long interview, and another called Il Messia e gli ebrei (The...
Milan. August 1st, 1995. Political tension and division right across Italy. The country seems to be going from bad to worse and is more divided than ever before. It is a deep cut which worries Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, the Archbishop of Milan. "Italy" he...
Intolerance is more dangerous than Nazism or Fascism or Communism. We are having lunch in the bow-windowed living room in Lord Weidenfeld's beautiful apartment on Chelsea Embankment, overlooking the Thames. There are books everywhere, a piano, and Old Master paintings...
The interview with Roberto Peregalli took place in Milan, the city where Peregalli works and has his office, just before he gave a public speech and a reading of his book at the Franco Parenti Theatre. Roberto, how would you define yourself? I like to be an architect...
// 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
