Saturday, February 20, 2016

My Hero / David Cesarani by David Herman

David Cesarini


My hero:

David Cesarani by David Herman

‘He changed the way we think about Anglo-Jewish history and added to our understanding of the Holocaust’


 David Herman
Saturday 20 February 2016


O
n 6 October the historian David Cesarani wrote to my wife, Susie. He was desperately ill, recovering from a major cancer operation. He only wanted to see his family. He didn’t want friends seeing him so ill. “I would rather you recall the image of that tousle-haired youth careening through the streets of Cambridge in his MG, summoning friends to a party with a toot of his hunting horn.” He died of a heart attack just over two weeks later.

The image is perfect. David was full of energy, always on the move, rushing from one deadline to another. He devoured books, argued about ideas late into the night, often over super-strong espresso. He had enormous stamina as a historian. It is fitting that Final Solution (Macmillan), his posthumously published work on the Holocaust, exceeds 1,000 pages. A mutual friend once saw David outside the cinema. Cesarani, he said, was not so much reading the reviews as sucking the print off the page. His range of interests, his appetite for life, was astonishing.
Some academics lack hinterland; they only have time for their work, narrow and specialised. Cesarani was all about the hinterland. He loved films, plays, music, art. Above all, he loved to argue. Half the BBC had his phone number because if you wanted someone to debate about Jews, Israel or the Holocaust, he was your man.
It is too soon to say what his true legacy will be. Following his acclaimed biographies of Koestler and Eichmann there is his book on Disraeli on the way. He changed the way we think about Anglo-Jewish history and added to our understanding of the Holocaust, through his work with film-makers from Laurence Rees to Steven Spielberg and by advising prime ministers on war crimes legislation and how to commemorate the Holocaust in Britain.
Cesarani was tirelessly on the move, “careering”, “tooting”, “summoning”. He was right: that’s how we should remember him.




2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson
102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

2012

190 My hero / Iris Murdoch by Charlotte Mendelson
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer

2015
2016
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