About Gatestone Institute". Gatestone Institute. Archived from the original on 9 April 2017 . Retrieved 17 March 2021. Before I begin this review I must declare an interest: Daniel Finkelstein is a close friend. But if you think that disqualifies me from hailing this book a masterpiece then I urge you to read it and discover it for yourself. This book has only just been written and therefore can’t be described as being in the pantheon of Conservative classics. But, as a modern policy book, it’s hard to beat. It’s an absolutely brilliant book. His basic theory is that all policy questions should be considered through the generational filter: that means booms and busts of population are absolutely critical, that the ties between generations are critical. His views on the ties between the generations are what make this a distinctly Conservative book. His columns range much wider than politics, of course. In the index, Diet Coke sits alongside Diddley, Bo, and Theodor Herzl nestles between Michael Heseltine and Jimi Hendrix. He is exceptionally well-read, and regular readers know they can rely on him to tell them what’s in books they haven’t even heard about, let alone read.

You seem to imply that seeing things as they are rather than as we would wish them to be is a Conservative virtue. Do you believe this is a uniquely Conservative starting point? Dame Louise Ellman MP". Jewish Leadership Council. Archived from the original on 17 July 2019 . Retrieved 17 July 2019. Tamara Finkelstein". Government of the United Kingdom. Archived from the original on 20 October 2023 . Retrieved 20 October 2023.

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a b Silva, Rohan (4 June 2023). "Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad by Daniel Finkelstein review – a family in peril". The Observer. London . Retrieved 4 June 2023.

Finkelstein, a Times columnist and member of the House of Lords, isn’t trying to explain why these utopian ideologies arose. His preoccupation is on the who and how: “…how the great forces of history crashed down in a terrible wave on two happy families; how it tossed them and turned them, and finally returned what was left to dry land”. Is this the key question for British Conservatives at this political moment, to formulate their own version of fairness? It’s appealing as the next stage of trying to abandon the ‘nasty party’ image. Zaheer, Mohammad (18 February 2019). "Opinion: It shouldn't have taken a report from outside the Muslim community for Tory Islamophobia to be taken seriously". The Independent. London. Daniel's father Ludwik was born in the Polish city of Lwow, now Lviv, the only child of a prosperous Jewish family. In 1939, after Hitler and Stalin carved up Poland, the family was rounded up by the communists. His grandfather Dolu was arrested and disappeared, while his father and grandmother were sent to Siberia, working as slave labourers on a collective farm. They somehow survived starvation and freezing winters, living in a house they built from cow dung, but always hoping to be reunited with Dolu.

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But the subtitle — A Family Memoir of Miraculous Survival — is no less important to this story. The miracle is not just their survival; we as a nation have also been the beneficiary. Yes, let’s start with An Appetite for Power by John Ramsden. Actually, this one book is acting as a substitute for six. Longman has produced a fabulous history of the Conservative Party in six volumes, of which John Ramsden wrote three; and An Appetite for Power is a single volume drawn from that. The series is a stunningly detailed history, which starts with constituency organisation and the power structure inside the Conservative Party and moves on to ideas. As the Conservative Party is primarily an organisational rather than an ideological body, that is a very good way of studying it. a b "Mirjam Finkelstein, Holocaust educator, friend of Anne Frank and survivor of Bergen-Belsen, dies aged 83". The Jewish Chronicle. London. 30 January 2017 . Retrieved 30 January 2017.