The Lines We Draw

A moving journey through a Jewish family history from BBC Newshour presenter Tim Franks. Tim Franks spent years as the BBC's Middle East Correspondent covering Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. During that time, he was attacked from both sides - sometimes accused of being a self-hating Jew, other times an Islamophobe - but he responded to it all with a reporter's detached curiosity, drawing a clear line between his identity and his work. It wasn't until years later that Franks asked himself, what does it mean to be Jewish? And how has it informed his journalism?It was a question he struggled to answer. As a child in 1970s Birmingham, Tim Franks had hardly any relations or sense of lineage - it wasn't until he learnt about the history of diaspora Jews that he realised why his family history was so difficult to trace. Setting out on a journey in search of his ancestral roots, Tim Franks' research takes him from Constantinople to Cadiz and Auschwitz, Lithuania and even Downing Street. The ancestors he discovers each speak to a part of the Jewish story, from risk-taking rabbis and struggling artists to Benjamin Disraeli, a convert who became the Conservative Party's "unlikeliest" ever leader. This book is a moving, deeply empathetic memoir which encourages us all to confront the lines we draw. In searching for what it means to be Jewish, Franks discovers what it means to take a stand and write about the world.