Jonathan Freedland
Encyclopedia
Jonathan Saul Freedland (born February 25, 1967) 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, in recognition of his essay ‘Bush’s Amazing Achievement’, published in The New York Review of Books. Freedland also writes best-selling thrillers under the pseudonym Sam Bourne.
Educated at University College School
, a boys' independent school
in Hampstead
, London
, and at Wadham College
at the University of Oxford
, he started 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
on the Washington Post, serving as a staff writer on the national news section. He became The Guardian’s Washington Correspondent in 1993, staying in that post 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
and from 2005 to 2007 he wrote a weekly column for the London Evening Standard. He has also been published in The Washington Post
, Newsweek
and The New Republic
magazines and appears regularly on radio and television. 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 4: How to be a Good President and President Hollywood. He is the son of Michael Freedland, a biographer and journalist.
.
In 1998 Freedland's first book, Bring Home the Revolution: The case for a British Republic, 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 Somerset Maugham Award for non-fiction and was later adapted into a two-part series for BBC Television. In 2005 he published Jacob's Gift, a memoir telling the stories of three generations of his own family as well as exploring wider questions of identity and belonging.
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
, originally written for The Guardian, appeared instead in The Times. The Guardian's
ombudsman 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 Number One on the Sunday Times bestsellers’ 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 reached Number Two in the Sunday Times bestseller 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.”
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, who writes a weekly column for The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
and a monthly piece for the Jewish Chronicle. He is also a regular contributor to The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
, and presents BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
’s contemporary history series, The Long View. He was named 'Columnist of the Year' in the 2002 What the Papers Say
What the Papers Say
What The Papers Say is a BBC radio programme that originally ran for many years on British television.Its first incarnation was the second longest-running programme on British television after Panorama...
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. Freedland also writes best-selling thrillers under the pseudonym Sam Bourne.
Educated at University College School
University College School
University College School, generally known as UCS, is an Independent school charity situated in Hampstead, north west London, England. The school was founded in 1830 by University College London and inherited many of that institution's progressive and secular views...
, a boys' independent school
Independent school
An independent school is a school that is independent in its finances and governance; it is not dependent upon national or local government for financing its operations, nor reliant on taxpayer contributions, and is instead funded by a combination of tuition charges, gifts, and in some cases the...
in Hampstead
Hampstead
Hampstead is an area of London, England, north-west of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Camden in Inner London, it is known for its intellectual, liberal, artistic, musical and literary associations and for Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, and at Wadham College
Wadham College, Oxford
Wadham College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, located at the southern end of Parks Road in central Oxford. It was founded by Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham, wealthy Somerset landowners, during the reign of King James I...
at the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
, he started his 'Fleet Street
Fleet Street
Fleet Street is a street in central London, United Kingdom, named after the River Fleet, a stream that now flows underground. It was the home of the British press until the 1980s...
' career at the short-lived Sunday Correspondent
Sunday Correspondent
The Sunday Correspondent was a shortlived British weekly national broadsheet newspaper. Launched on 17 September 1989, it ceased publication on 25 November 1990. It was edited by Peter Cole....
. In 1990 he joined the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, working as a news reporter across radio and television, appearing most often on The World at One
The World At One
The World at One, or WATO for short, is BBC Radio 4's long-running lunchtime news and current affairs programme, which is broadcast from 1pm to 1:30pm from Monday to Friday. The programme describes itself as "Britain's leading political programme. With a reputation for rigorous and original...
and Today on Radio 4. In the summer of 1992, he was awarded the Laurence Stern fellowship
Laurence Stern fellowship
The Laurence Stern 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 National Press Foundation. Awardees are selected by the Post...
on the Washington Post, serving as a staff writer on the national news section. He became The Guardian’s Washington Correspondent in 1993, staying in that post 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
The Daily Mirror is a British national daily tabloid newspaper which was founded in 1903. Twice in its history, from 1985 to 1987, and from 1997 to 2002, the title on its masthead was changed to read simply The Mirror, which is how the paper is often referred to in popular parlance. It had an...
and from 2005 to 2007 he wrote a weekly column for the London Evening Standard. He has also been published in The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
and The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
magazines and appears regularly on radio and television. 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 4: How to be a Good President and President Hollywood. He is the son of Michael Freedland, a biographer and journalist.
As an author
Freedland has published six books: two non-fiction works and four thrillers under the pseudonym Sam BourneSam Bourne
Sam Bourne is the pseudonym of the British journalist, Jonathan Freedland intended to distinguish his work in fiction from his journalism. Freedland is credited on the copyright page as the author of the thrillers The Righteous Men , The Last Testament , The Final Reckoning and The Chosen One .His...
.
In 1998 Freedland's first book, Bring Home the Revolution: The case for a British Republic, 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 Somerset Maugham Award for non-fiction and was later adapted into a two-part series for BBC Television. In 2005 he published Jacob's Gift, a memoir telling the stories of three generations of his own family as well as exploring wider questions of identity and belonging.
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
Michael Dibdin
Michael Dibdin , was a British crime writer.-Life:Dibdin was born in Wolverhampton, the son of a physicist, and was brought up from the age of seven in Lisburn, Northern Ireland where he attended Friends' School...
, originally written for The Guardian, appeared instead in The Times. The Guardian's
ombudsman 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
Alan Rusbridger
Alan Charles Rusbridger is the editor of the British newspaper The Guardian. He has also been a reporter and a columnist.-Early life:...
accepted.
In June 2006, The Righteous Men was picked as a Richard and Judy Summer Read and soon rose to Number One on the Sunday Times bestsellers’ 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
Nakam
The Nokmim, also referred to as The Avengers or the Jewish Avengers, were alleged groups of Jewish assassins that targeted Nazi war criminals with the aim of avenging the Holocaust....
: a group of Holocaust survivors who sought revenge against their Nazi persecutors. The Final Reckoning reached Number Two in the Sunday Times bestseller list. The Chosen One, the fourth thriller by Sam Bourne, was published in the UK in 2010. In April 2010, The Bookseller
The Bookseller
The Bookseller is a British magazine reporting news on the publishing industry. Neill Denny is editor-in-chief of the weekly print edition of the magazine, while Philip Jones is deputy editor, having recently been promoted from the position of managing editor of the Bookseller.com...
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.”
Works
- Jacob's Gift: A Journey into the Heart of Belonging (Hamish Hamilton, 2005), ISBN 0-241-14243-1
- Bring Home the Revolution: The Case for a British RepublicBring Home the RevolutionBring 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...
(Fourth Estate, 1998) ISBN 1-85702-547-4 - The Righteous Men (HarperCollins, 2006) ISBN 0-00-720328-4
- The Last Testament, published elsewhere as The Jerusalem Secret (HarperCollins, 2007) ISBN 978-0-00-720333-8
- The Final Reckoning (HarperCollins, 2008) ISBN 978-0-00-726649-4
External links
- Official site
- Dibdin's review of The Righteous Men
- Guardian readers' editor Ian Mayes's column
- Jonathan Freedland extended interview with Al Gore
- Journalisted – Articles by Jonathan Freedland
- Freedland archive from The New York Review of BooksThe New York Review of BooksThe New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...