Jonathan Freedland

Jonathan Saul Freedland (born February 25 1967) is a British journalist, who writes a weekly column for The Guardian and a monthly piece for the Jewish Chronicle. Freedland has previously written for The Daily Mirror and as of September 2005, he writes each Thursday for the London Evening Standard. He is the son of Michael Freedland, the biographer and journalist.

Educated at University College School, a boys' independent school in Hampstead, London, and at Wadham College at the University of Oxford, he started his "Fleet Street" career at the short-lived Sunday Correspondent. He also presents BBC Radio 4’s contemporary history series, The Long View. He was named Columnist of the Year in the 2002 What the Papers Say awards.

As an author

Freedland has published three books: two non-fiction works and a thriller under the pseudonym Sam Bourne. In 1998 Freedland's first book, Bring Home the Revolution: The case for a British Republic, argued that Britain should reclaim the revolutionary ideals it exported to America in the 18th century, and undergo a constitutional and cultural overhaul. The book won a Somerset Maugham Award for non-fiction and was later adapted into a two-part series for BBC Television. In 2005 he published Jacob's Gift, a memoir telling the stories of three generations of his own family as well as exploring wider questions of identity and belonging.

The Righteous Men, published in 2006, is a religious thriller published under the Bourne nom de plume. The book made a brief appearance in the gossip columns when a damning review[1], by Michael Dibdin, originally written for The Guardian, appeared instead in The Times. The Guardian's ombudsman [2]discovered that when Dibdin originally submitted his review to the Guardian he offered to withdraw it if it were deemed too awkward - an offer the Editor Alan Rusbridger of the Guardian accepted.

Works

• Jacob's Gift: A Journey into the Heart of Belonging (Hamish Hamilton, 2005), ISBN 0-241-14243-1
• Bring Home the Revolution: The Case for a British Republic (Fourth Estate, 1998) ISBN 1-85702-547-4
• The Righteous Men (HarperCollins, 2006) ISBN 0-00-720328-4

External links

• Official site
• Open Directory project - Jonathan Freedland directory category
• Dibdin's review of The Righteous Men
• Guardian readers' editor Ian Mayes's column
• Jonathan Freedland extended interview with Al Gore