Farewell Leicester Square

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"Betty Miller wrote this, her fourth novel, in 1935. But her publisher, Victor Gollancz, #x91;turned the book down flat,#x92; wrote Neal Ascherson in The New York Review of Books. #x91;It seems most likely that he saw it as terrifyingly provocative, not only an attack on the solid English assimilation of his own family but a tactless outburst against the English at precisely the moment, two years after Hitler's assumption of power, when their tolerance and hospitality were most needed.#x92; In the novel Alec Berman escapes from his restrictive Jewish family in Brighton, and although he has a successful career as a film-maker (perhaps modelled on that of Alexander Korda) and marries the very English Catherine, he always feels a #x91;Dago: Jew: Outsider.#x92; #x91;Yet,' continued Neal Ascherson, #x91;the rejection is not really the refusal of a snobbish Gentile world fully to accept him. The rejecting force comes from within himself.#x92; #x91;A thought-provoking insight into anti-semitism between the wars,' wrote the Guardian, 'not the violent prejudice of Mosley's fascists, but the discreet discrimination of the bourgeoisie.#x92;" -- Provided by publisher.

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