Israel's first British-born ambassador to the UK, Yehuda Avner, said this week that it was a "dream come true" that the film rights to his best-selling book, The Prime Ministers, have been sold to two Hollywood production companies.

Two films are set to be made from the book, one a documentary produced by the film arm of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, and the other a drama, scheduled for release in 2013, to be made by Crystal City Entertainment, one of whose partners, to Mr Avner's delight, is George Clooney.

Moriah Films, the Simon Wiesenthal production company, is sending a film crew to Israel on Sunday to begin interviews with Mr Avner. The documentary will have a professional narrator and next spring, though he has yet no idea who will play him, Mr Avner will go to the US to talk to the actors for the feature film.

Manchester-born Ambassador Avner, now 83, was once the English speechwriter for Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. In the copious notes he made working for Eshkol and his successors, Golda Meir, Menachem Begin and Yitzchak Rabin, Mr Avner found political gold which formed the basis of his book.