Book Talk – Displacement: Zweig, Roth and Benjamin, by Richard Harper

Much relevant to issues of migration and democracy today, Richard Harper will be speaking about his book, Displacement, an exploration of the meaning and feeling of those being persecuted, exiled and displaced through the eyes of three eminent Jewish writers Zweig, Roth and Benjamin. These writers were hunted to premature death by fascism, and their literary genius, dramatic lives and the circumstances of the taking of their own lives continue to captivate the imaginations of readers across the world. Uniquely this work examines these three writers for the first time together in a single book.

Professor Mark Donnelly will join Richard in conversation on the book.

Richard Harper studied law at Magdalen College Oxford, then practised as a barrister and then sat as a longstanding senior family law judge. During his judicial career he has written on medical treatment and the law relating to the protection of children and vulnerable adults. He now writes and lectures on the law relating to the protection of children, and has written two recently published books. The legal work is “The Family Court in Practice: a safeguarding guide for all practitioners working with children” published by Routledge. “DISPLACEMENT: ZWEIG, ROTH AND BENJAMIN, three eminent writers hunted to death by fascism,” published by Arrow Gate Publishing of London, is his first work of nonfiction outside of the law. The connecting theme of Harper’s writing is examining injustice and how it may be ameliorated.

Mark Donnelly is Associate Professor in History at St. Mary’s University, London where he is also co-director of the Walpole Centre for Literature, History and Public Pasts. Mark’s publications include an edited collection Mad Dogs and Englishness: Popular Music and English Identities published by Bloomsbury (2017); Sixties Britain: Culture, Society and Politics (2005); as well as two co-authored books with Claire Norton Liberating Histories (2019) and a revised second edition of Doing History (2021). Most recently, he has published an article for a special edition of Rethinking History on the influence of Martin Davies’s ideas and a chapter on Holocaust-related paperbacks in sixties Britain. He is currently editing two multi-authored volumes of essays: Song, Music and Wellbeing for Amsterdam University Press, and the Routledge Handbook of Gender in the 1960s.

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