Abrahams, Harold Maurice (1899–1978), athlete and civil servant, was born at 30 Rutland Road, Bedford, on 15 December 1899, the youngest in the family of two daughters and four sons of Isaac Klonimus (1850–1921) of Vladislavovka in Russian-occupied Poland and his wife, Esther Isaacs...
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Abrahams, Israel (1858–1925), Jewish scholar and historian, was born on 26 November 1858 at 10 Finsbury Square, London, the second son in the family of four sons and two daughters of Barnett Abrahams (1831–1863) and his wife, Jane, née Brandon (1834–1895). His father was principal of ...
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Anthony Howard
Abse, Leopold [Leo] (1917–2008), politician, was born at 5 Clare Street, Cardiff, on 22 April 1917, the second of three sons and third of four children of Rudolph Abse (1887–1964), a cinema manager then serving as a private in the Lancashire Fusiliers, and his wife, ...
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Christopher Frayling
Adam, Sir Kenneth Hugo [Ken] (1921–2016), art director and production designer for film, was born Klaus Hugo Adam on 5 February 1921 in Berlin, one of four children of Fritz Adam (1880–1936) and his wife Lilli, née Saalfeld (...
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Geoffrey Alderman
Adler, Hermann (1839–1911), chief rabbi, was born in Hanover on 30 May 1839, the second son of two sons and three daughters of Nathan Marcus Adler (1803–1890), then chief rabbi of Hanover, and his first wife, Henrietta Worms (d. 1854). In June 1845 the family moved to ...
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Adler, Lawrence Cecil [Larry] (1914–2001), harmonica player and composer, was born on 10 February 1914 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, the son of Louis Adler, plumber, and his wife, Sadie Hack. His family were of Russian descent and changed their name from Zelakovitch to ...
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Geoffrey Alderman
Adler, Nathan Marcus (1803–1890), chief rabbi, was born on 15 January 1803 in Hanover, the third son of Mordecai Baer Adler, the unofficial chief rabbi in Hanover. His mother's name remains unknown. Adler's education, a synthesis of strict Orthodox Judaism and the world of secular scholarship, typified the modern outlook of ‘Torah-true’ Judaism fashioned in the wake of the Enlightenment. ...
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Alexander, Samuel (1859–1938), philosopher, the third son and fourth child of Samuel Alexander, an Australian, and his wife, Eliza Sloman, who came from Cape Town, was born at Sydney, New South Wales, on 6 January 1859. His father, a saddler, died of consumption at the age of thirty-eight, shortly before his birth. His mother died in his house at ...
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Arden, Don [real name Harry Levy] (1926–2007), rock music manager and promoter, was born on 4 January 1926 at 123 Crescent Road, Crumpsall, Manchester, the son of Lazarus Levy, a machinist in a factory making waterproof garments, and his wife, Sarah (Sally), ...
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Balcon, Sir Michael Elias (1896–1977), film producer, was born on 19 May 1896 at 116 Summer Lane, Edgbaston, Birmingham, the youngest son and fourth of five children of Louis Balcon (c.1858–1946) and his wife, Laura Greenberg (c.1863–1934). His parents, Jewish immigrants from ...
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Balint, Michael Maurice [formerly Mihaly Bergsmann] (1896–1970), psychoanalyst, was born on 3 December 1896 in Baross Street, Jozsefvaros, a residential section of Budapest, Hungary. He was the first of the two children of Ignac Bergsmann, a general medical practitioner. Both his parents were descendants of German Jewish families who had been fully assimilated Hungarians for only two or three generations. He later changed his name to ...
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Barnato, Barnett Isaacs [Barney] (1852–1897), diamond merchant and financier, born on 5 July 1852 at Aldgate, London, was the second son of the five children of Isaac Isaacs, shopkeeper, and Leah Isaacs (said to be related to the master of the rolls, Sir George Jessel...
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Barnes, Peter Henry (1931–2004), playwright and screenwriter, was born on 10 January 1931 at 33 Devons Road, Bromley, London, the son of (James) Frederick Barnes, fairground caterer and café owner, and his wife, Martha, née Miller.
I grew up in a downmarket seaside resort on the east coast where my parents worked in amusement arcades on the pier and later owned two cafés on the seafront, along with the cockles and whelks stalls, the deckchairs, Punch and Judy booths, and artists who would draw, with a pointed stick, elegant pictures in the wet sand....
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Clive Brown
Barnett, John (1802–1890), composer, born at Bedford on 15 July 1802 (some sources say 1 July), was the eldest son of a German Jewish diamond merchant, Bernhard Beer, and a Hungarian mother, who died during his early childhood. His father adopted the surname ...
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Bauer, Peter Thomas, Baron Bauer (1915–2002), economist, was born on 6 November 1915 in Budapest, the son of Aladár Dezsö Bauer (1883–1944), bookmaker, and his wife, Anna, née Grossmann. He attended the Scholae Piae (a Gymnasium of the Piarist order) and enrolled for a law degree at the ...
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D. T. Jenkins
Behrens, Sir Jacob (1806–1889), textile merchant, was born on 20 November 1806, one of the sons of Nathan Behrens (d. 1842), a Jewish merchant, and Clara Hahn, daughter of a Hamburg silk merchant, at Pyrmont, in the small German principality of Waldeck...
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Belisha, (Isaac) Leslie Hore-, Baron Hore-Belisha (1893–1957), politician, was born in London on 7 September 1893, the only son of Jacob Isaac Belisha (d. 1894), an insurance company manager, and his wife, Elizabeth Miriam (d. 1936), daughter of John Leslie Miers...
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D. Cameron Watt
Beloff, Max, Baron Beloff (1913–1999), historian, was born on 2 July 1913 at 21 York House, Fieldway Crescent, Islington, London, the elder son in a family of five children of Simon Beloff, general merchant, and his wife, Marie, née Katzin. Nora Beloff and ...
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Benedict, Sir Julius (1804–1885), conductor and composer, was born at Stuttgart, Germany, on 27 November 1804 (in some nineteenth-century reference works the date was given incorrectly as 24 December 1804), the son of Moses Benedict, a rich German Jewish banker. At the Stuttgart Gymnasium...
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Benenson, Peter James Henry (1921–2005), barrister and human rights campaigner, was born on 31 July 1921 at 6 Albert Court, Knightsbridge, London, the only child of Lieutenant-Colonel Harold Josiah Solomon (1885–1930), army officer, and his wife, Flora (1895–1984), daughter of the Jewish Russian banker ...
