VOLUMEAJR JOURNAL10 NO.11 NNOVEMbovembER 2010 A Jewish intellectual he historian Tony Judt, who were published in The New York Review of died in August aged 62, was Books, the last appearing only a fortnight or T an academic who was also an so before his death. An interview with him influential intellectual, one of those was broadcast in June by BBC Radio 4, in widely recognised figures who set the the occasional series No Triumph, No agenda for public discourse and debate, Tragedy; it made for compelling listening. helping to determine the course of ideas Though he worked in New York, far beyond the groves of academe. His Judt can still be considered a British towering achievement was his history of intellectual, thanks to his British birth Europe since 1945, Postwar, which was and education and to the international first published by Penguin in the USA in nature of modern scholarship, which has 2005 and has since received widespread made his writings as influential in Britain acclaim. as they are in America. While Jews have The book provides a compelling and long been prominent in the American coherent analysis of the development of intellectual landscape, they have been less the continent of Europe, East and West, of a permanent feature among the leaders starting with its emergence from the of thought in Britain. And while Jewish destruction of the Second World War, Tony Judt, 1948-2010 intellectuals have retained their leading proceeding through the reconstruction position in America, they seem to be on of the 1950s, the turbulence of the 1960s continent of Europe. the wane in Britain. and the disillusionment of the 1970s, and Judt had in his youth been an ardent Where are today’s equivalents of taking us on to its reunification in the wake left-wing Zionist but, after serving as Sir Isaiah Berlin and Jacob Bronowski, of the fall of Communism. It concludes a volunteer driver and interpreter for the giants of earlier decades? Tony with an acute analysis of Europe’s current the Israeli army in 1967, he became Judt has some claim to be regarded as uncertain state, with national entities and disillusioned. Falling prey to the temptation their successor, but other candidates identities persisting beneath transnational to indulge in political commentary, are hard to find. Jonathan Miller, for all structures. Its epilogue has the striking an occupational hazard of the public his achievements in both science and title ‘From the House of the Dead’ (taken intellectual, he pronounced with some the performing arts, is not primarily a from Dostoyevsky’s account of life in trenchancy on the subject of Israel and man of ideas. Simon Schama, a brilliant a Siberian prison) and deals with the was not a little put out by the vehemence historian, is a public figure thanks to his half-submerged role of the Holocaust in of the reaction his writings provoked. TV programmes, but his status has veered modern European memory. Fortunately, his scholarship on modern towards that of a celebrity, at least since he Tony Judt was born in 1948 to Jewish European history was unaffected by these has taken to popping up at general election parents in the East End of London, though partisan diversions. night parties on BBC TV and even on his he grew up in Putney. He studied at Judt wrote copiously for The New York own cookery programme. Cambridge, and taught there, at Berkeley Review of Books, and continued to do Jews are, of course, very well established in California and at Oxford, before moving so even when smitten by a particularly in British academic and cultural life, but in 1988 to New York University, where vicious form of motor neurone disease, these days they mostly remain limited he founded the Remarque Institute, which paralysed him from the neck to their own particular professional dedicated to European studies, whose down and obliged him to live encased specialities. Jewish academics in Britain director he remained until his death. in a metal tube, entirely dependent on no longer reach out, in the manner of the From his early studies of French left-wing external assistance. His courage in the classic intellectual, to a wider public: the politics and thought, his prodigious range face of this affliction came across in the difference is that between Bronowski, of knowledge enabled him to broaden out series of reflections and recollections that whose TV series and book The Ascent of into the history and culture of the entire he dictated from his metal tomb and that Man attracted a huge audience, and his continued overleaf 1 AJR JOURNAL NOVEMbER 2010 A Jewish intellectuAl cont. from page 1 KRISTALLNACHT daughter Lisa Jardine, an academic whose preserve Britain’s (largely imaginary) ‘place MEMORIAL SERVICE 2010 work is highly respected in scholarly at the top table’, it budgeted £209 million on circles, but not well known beyond them. military expenditure for 1947, as compared Tuesday 9 November Judt’s Postwar is a veritable goldmine to the £6 million spent on all military and at 2 pm of insights, both in its analysis of diplomatic expenditure in the years 1934-38. the underlying long-term trends in Quite what maintaining full naval fleets in at Belsize Square Synagogue, European history since 1945 and in its the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean as London NW3 often arrestingly innovative treatment well as the Atlantic, plus a full ‘China station’, The service will be led by of individual events, people, products, a raft of 120 RAF squadrons worldwide and Rabbi Rodney Mariner trends, institutions and crises. Judt seems military forces from Hong Kong to Trieste, to know about everything. He covers was supposed to achieve for a bankrupt, Guest speaker: every country in Europe, from the damage middle-sized European nation remains Rev Bernd Koschland inflicted by the war on Norway’s industrial obscure. As a result, Britain was unique in Refreshments will be served output, set in the context of an illuminating devoting hardly any of the Marshall Plan account of the rapid economic recovery aid it received to industrial investment or RSVP: 020 8385 3070 of the Western European countries after modernisation; 97 per cent of the funds it 1945, to the 1949 show trials of ‘Titoist’ received went on repaying the country’s AJR THEATRE OUTING leaders in Bulgaria, graphically illustrating debts. WAR HORSE the ruthlessness of Stalinist repression in This had predictably dire consequences. Thursday 25 November 2010 Eastern Europe. In a revealing section entitled ‘A Tale 2.30-5.15 pm at New London Theatre The book contains a wealth of detailed of Two Economies’, Judt shows how Drury Lane, London information, but always deployed in the the shoddy, unreliable and overpriced War Horse is a thrilling and spectacular framework of a lucid and original structure goods produced by Britain’s inefficient, production based on the celebrated of argument. Judt is your man if you want strike-ridden industries were unable novel by Michael Morpurgo and has to know about the politics of the punk rock to compete with the products of West been at the National for an extensive run before moving to Drury Lane. bands of the 1970s (‘as one-dimensional as German industry, whose costs were kept The First World War is the backdrop their musical range’); or about the failure down and whose quality was kept up by for this tale of bravery, loyalty and the of the economies of the Communist states sustained investment in new and efficient extraordinary bond between a young of Eastern Europe (in 1989 East Germany production methods. Britain thus lost the recruit and his horse. was producing one-fiftieth of the number peace almost as comprehensively as it Price of ticket: £30 of computers manufactured in Austria); or won the war. For further details, please call the complexities of postmodernist thought But Judt’s analysis goes deeper. He Susan Harrod on 020 8385 3070 (‘a level of expressive opacity that proved pinpoints demographics as the key factor irresistibly appealing to a new generation underpinning the spectacular economic south into the factories of the north. of students and their teachers’); or how, growth that characterised the immediate Here Britain was at a disadvantage. in the years 1945-48, France ‘abruptly post-war decades in Western Europe. For For though it shared in the remarkable negated’ 300 years of history and resolved what transformed European industrial increase in the birth rate that occurred from its German problem by Europeanising productivity was a vast new workforce that 1945, providing Europe’s industries with it within the framework of common flooded in millions from low-productivity new consumers as well as new workers, it European economic institutions. sectors like agriculture into the new, no longer had a large agricultural sector Judt’s analysis of Britain after 1945, high-productivity industrial sector; the to provide a pool of cheap labour. This to take just one example, is engrossing. classic example was the extraordinary is a significant and frequently ignored He begins with the stark fact that Britain transformation of Italian industry through factor in the economic decline of areas emerged from the war insolvent, having the influx of workers from the agricultural like Britain and south-eastern Belgium, lost one quarter of its national wealth which had industrialised early and had no AJR Directors and burdened itself with crippling dollar- Gordon Greenfield agricultural labour surplus left on which Michael Newman to draw. However, as Judt shows, Britain’s denominated debts that it struggled for Carol Rossen baby-boom generation went on to pioneer decades to repay.