With Helen Rappaport, Jean Strouse and Anne Sebba
A showcase of biography by accomplished authors whose subjects are buried at Willesden. The participants are masters of the art. This session will give you a flavour of different eras of Jewish life in Britain and introduce some unforgettable personalities. Helen Rappaport and Jean Strouse will be in conversation with Anne Sebba about their research and writing. Helen has written about Sarah Rachel Levison, aka “Madame Rachel” and Jean is working on a book about the Wertheimer family.
Contributors
Helen Rappaport
Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author and historian specialising in the period 1837–1918 in late Imperial and revolutionary Russia and Victorian Britain. She has written 14 books covering her broad range of historical knowledge, and is a regular contributor to history and documentary programmes for TV, radio and online media such as Netflix. She is the author of Beautiful Forever, the thrilling and scandalous tale of Madame Rachel, cosmetician of London’s Bond Street.
Jean Strouse
The New York-based writer Jean Strouse, author of Morgan, American Financier, and Alice James, A Biography, is currently writing a book about John Singer Sargent’s twelve portraits of the family of Asher Wertheimer, a prominent London art dealer. Several members of the family are buried at Willesden.
Chair
Anne Sebba
Award winning biographer, historian and author of eleven books. Her latest, Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940’s, optioned for a TV multi-part series, was the winner of the 2016 Franco-British Society book prize. Her latest book Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy will be published in the UK and US in 2021.
W for Willesden Cemetery
Helen Rappaport
Jean Strouse
Anne Sebba
© serenabolton
