Remembering my good friends

Lord Weidenfeld's life has spanned many worlds. After arriving in England in 1939, he spent the war years with the BBC as a European news commentator. Later, he started the magazine Contact, a forum for the leading edge of European thinking that evolved into the book publishing firm of Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Weidenfeld's energy, charm and intelligence have made him a major figure in world publishing, business, academia, the arts, politics and the media. He spent a year working for President Chaim Weizmann, part of his lifelong contribution to Israel. He has published and/or known personally some of the great leaders of our times - Harold Wilson, Adenauer, de Gaulle, Kissinger, Golda Meir, Pope John Paul II and Helmut Kohl, among others. His circle of acquaintances, friends and authors has included Peter Ustinov, Graham Greene, Irving Berlin, George Bush, Vladimir Nabokov, the Longfords, A. J. P. Taylor, Cecil Beaton, the Gettys, Laurence Olivier, the Rothschilds - in fact, frequently it has seemed there was nobody of note George Weidenfeld didn't know. His love of people and his ability to bring them together is unmatched. His sharply perceptive observations about the many and varied experiences of his political, social and professional lives make this book more than a vivid autobiography - it is a fascinating social and cultural portrait of the postwar era, from the intellectual and social salons of London and New York to the political forums in England, Europe, the United States and Israel.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.