Alec Berman escapes from his restrictive Jewish family in Brighton, and although he has a successful career as a film-maker (perhaps modelled on that of Alexander Korda) and marries the very English Catherine, he always feels a 'Dago: Jew: Outsider.' 'Yet,' continued Neal Ascherson, 'the rejection is not really the refusal of a snobbish Gentile world fully to accept him. The rejecting force comes from within himself.'

'A thought-provoking insight into anti-semitism between the wars,' wrote the Guardian, 'not the violent prejudice of Mosley's fascists, but the discreet discrimination of the bourgeoisie.' An exceptional novel about what it means to be an outsider in England, it is also a fascinating portrait of the film world in England in the 1930s.

REVIEW

Farewell Leicester Square captures the essence of the 1930's without suffering from the hindsight that the war is only a few years away. It beautifully evokes the life of the family in the finest detail, set against a background of anti-semitism, not only the forces from without but also the forces within Alec himself. The book is written in a series of "scenes" much as a movie would be. Some of these are very powerful." - Amazon reviewer

PRODUCT DETAILS
Paperback with jacket
Publisher: Persephone Books
ISBN: 978-1903155035
Pages: 336
Endpaper: The fabric is 'Black Goose' (1938) by EQ (Elsie) Nicholson, a cotton hand printed with lino blocks; the sky-blue background is strikingly beautiful and the flying geese have overtones of the 'black sheep' of the family.