David Bennun

Writer

Latest from David Bennun

Beatles

Without gay Jewish Brian Epstein we would have no Beatles

The extraordinary life of the greatest of pop managers is revealed in a new biography

3 min read

Scrupulously honest: Brian Epstein receiving the 1965 Edison Award for the Fab Four at the Grand Gala du Disque in Amsterdam

A makeshift memorial in front of the Brandenburg gate for the victims of the Christopher Street Day pride parade attack on August 2, 2026 in Berlin, Germany. (Image: Getty Images)

Deny the Islamist reality and the far right will exploit the truth

3 min read

FIFA President Gianni Infantino (Image: Getty Images)

Do critics of FIFA’s plans to ‘sell off’ the World Cup not remember Qatar 2022?

3 min read

Forgotten legends: (clockwise from top) winger Leon Sperling, standing fourth from right, with the Poland team before the 1924 Olympics; Hakoah Vienna in 1924, with Austrian defender Max Scheuer on the far left; Arpad Weisz, who became the youngest coach to win the Italian League

The forgotten European football stars who were murdered for being Jewish

3 min read

The far-right crocodile that will eat you last is still going to eat you

Some of my fellow Jews, terrified by what is being levelled at us from the left, fall into the ‘my enemy's enemy trap’. Aligning oneself with such people is not just immoral, it is also a grievous strategic error

3 min read

July 10, 2026 15:37

Saltwater crocodile (Image: Getty Images)

From the Front Line review: Vasily Grossman gives us an unrivalled picture of the war

David Bennun is mesmerised by the Soviet Jewish journalist’s articles, and what they reveal about him

5 min read

June 26, 2026 12:06

Obdurate insistence: the writer Vasily Grossman, and Jews arriving at Treblinka in August 1942

Even an escape to the sun lies in the long shadow of this conflict

Would Spanish locals have been as hospitable if they’d known one key fact about this tourist?

3 min read

June 19, 2026 12:24

Landscape around the small Spanish town of Daroca (Image: Getty Images)

Go and see Paul Simon – an icon of New York’s Jewish golden age

If the time and place he was born into had been like today, we might never have heard of him. As if to underline the point, an organisation of ‘musicians and cultural workers’ is calling for a Eurovision boycott while Israel is included

3 min read

May 14, 2026 10:35

Go and see Paul Simon – an icon of New York’s Jewish golden age

The Kanye West affair isn’t as bad as it seems –it’s much, much worse

It is a curious irony that of only one people on Earth is it demanded they must at all times behave with perfect Christian charity – and that is the Jews

3 min read

April 15, 2026 10:44

Kanye West, also known as Ye (Image: Getty)

The Tribe review: ‘a brilliantly told story of a once gilded Sephardi family’

This epic set in Jewish Salonica is full of ideas, marvellously rich in detail and its people feel real

2 min read

April 7, 2026 16:21

The way we were: Michael Arditti's new saga, and the Kovo family in Salonica, in Greece, which under Ottoman rule was Europe's only Jewish-majority city

They may think of me as a bloodthirsty Zionist – but I still love their art

Their music, films and books belongs to me as much as to anyone else. The possibility that they might hate the joy I take in them is just a bonus

4 min read

March 31, 2026 10:58

Roger Waters, founding member of former rock band Pink Floyd, performs in Buenos Aires on March 7, 2010 as part of his "The Wall Live" world tour. (Image: Getty)

Will Self: What inspired me to write this book? The Glasto crowd chanting ‘Death to the IDF’

Twenty years on from his public resignation as a Jew, the novelist explains where he stands now

6 min read

March 25, 2026 13:59

One-state solutionist: Will Self and his new book

Howard Jacobson: ‘October 7? It was as if permission had been given to do this to the Jews’

The novelist on how an extended rant against the surge in global antisemitism turned into his brilliant new book Howl

7 min read

March 4, 2026 13:40

Virtuoso phrasemaker: Howard Jacobson at the launch of his new book (Photo: Gary Manhine)

Western Holocaust erasure and antizionism follows an old Soviet script

It is curious how the day marking the liberation of Auschwitz is the only date in the year when so many people who otherwise obsess endlessly about Jews suddenly lose the capacity to mention Jews at all

4 min read

February 5, 2026 14:08

How I found the real Philip Roth

David Bennun talks to Steven J. Zipperstein about his new literary biography of the pre-eminent Jewish novelist

6 min read

January 15, 2026 13:39

Defying his detractors: Philip Roth (right) and Steven J Zipperstein

Goodbye to Berlin – a lost Jewish Germany is brought back to life in an epic saga

David Bennun has high praise for The Effingers, a beautifully subtle novel describing Germany’s slide into Nazism

5 min read

December 18, 2025 16:55

Goodbye to Berlin – a lost Jewish Germany is brought back to life in an epic saga

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David Bennun

Latest from David Bennun

Without gay Jewish Brian Epstein we would have no Beatles

Deny the Islamist reality and the far right will exploit the truth

Do critics of FIFA’s plans to ‘sell off’ the World Cup not remember Qatar 2022?

The forgotten European football stars who were murdered for being Jewish

More from David Bennun

The far-right crocodile that will eat you last is still going to eat you

From the Front Line review: Vasily Grossman gives us an unrivalled picture of the war

Even an escape to the sun lies in the long shadow of this conflict

Go and see Paul Simon – an icon of New York’s Jewish golden age

The Kanye West affair isn’t as bad as it seems –it’s much, much worse

The Tribe review: ‘a brilliantly told story of a once gilded Sephardi family’

They may think of me as a bloodthirsty Zionist – but I still love their art

Will Self: What inspired me to write this book? The Glasto crowd chanting ‘Death to the IDF’

Howard Jacobson: ‘October 7? It was as if permission had been given to do this to the Jews’

Western Holocaust erasure and antizionism follows an old Soviet script

How I found the real Philip Roth

Goodbye to Berlin – a lost Jewish Germany is brought back to life in an epic saga