On November 2, 1917, Arthur Balfour, then Foreign Secretary, wrote to Lord Rothschild to say that the British Government viewed with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. The consequences of this statement have reverberated throughout the world in a crescendo of bitterness and violence ever since. It interposed a European (mainly Russian) Jewish cultural idea in an Arab land and it led eventually to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Eleven years before his declaration, Balfour had met the passionate Zionist and émigré chemist Chaim Weizmann while electioneering in Manchester. At the centre of Geoffrey Lewis's compelling book is the story of this encounter and the developing relationship between these two men: the Zionist and the Zealot, so different from each other, yet drawn together by forces that neither quite understood, with consequences that were to have a profound effect on the modern world.

Author: Geoffrey Lewis
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Continuum
Published: 05/01/2009
Pages: 224
Weight: 1.1lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.40w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781847250407

About the Author
Geoffrey Lewis is the author of biographies of Lord Atkin, Lord Hailsham and Carson: The Man Who Divided Ireland (Hambledon Continuum 2006).