A Double Thread: Growing Up English and Jewish in London

by John Gross

This evocative picture of a lost London and a vanished culture is also the story of a bookish boy discovering his own path. John Gross is the son of a Jewish doctor who practiced in the East End of London from the 1920s to World War II and beyond. His parents were the children of immigrants, steeped in Eastern European customs, yet outside the home he grew up in a very English world of comics and corner shops, sandbags and bomb sites, battered school desks and addictive, dusty cinemas. Mr. Gross looks back on his childhood with humor and insight, tracing this double inheritance. Religion underpins family life: the richness of the Yiddish language, stories, jokes and music-hall humor, the rituals and mysteries of the synagogue, are set against the life of the streets, where boxers and gangsters are heroes and patients turn up on the doorstep at all hours. And in the background, behind the wit and the color, lie the shadows of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.

Genres: Autobiography, Nonfiction

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

John Gross was the editor of The Times Literary Supplement in London, a senior book editor and book critic on the staff of The New York Times in New York, and theatre critic for The Sunday Telegraph. He was also literary editor of The New Statesman and Spectator magazines.

Reviews

[Muaz Jalil · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Gross. Currently reading his edited book of essays. I only wish he had one that dwelt on his adult life. His prose style is so smooth. Near the end he mentions how he dealt with anti-Semitism in literature and I think his can be applied to other areas such as racism/colonial mindsets/patriarchal/misogynistic attitude in literature. Gross's approach 1) judge on a case by case basis 2) neither ignore nor exaggerate 3) recognize that it may not be the most important aspect of the work 4)ignore them if they are not major aspect of the novel 5) take in to account when it was written. Hence anti-semitism post Hitler is much worse than say in Victorian era.

[David Askanase · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful picture of both threads! Well written and short enough to hold my interests. Knowing he grew up to be the book editor on two great papers adds resonance.

[Lemar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very honest and unflinching book recounting the rather unusual and important experience of growing up Jewish in 20th century Britain. Extremely erudite and, appropriately, combining warmth with a certain British reserve. I loved it.