by Judy Batalion

Slum-Lord Survivor

The messy truths of post-war English Jews.

These days, real estate is all. Just prior to reading the fourth novel by journalist and novelist Linda Grant, The Clothes on Their Backs (Virago, £11.99), I watched a British TV documentary about West London’s property market, referencing the area’s notorious 1960s slums, run by the infamous slum-lord, Peter Rachman — a Jew. I cringed, and wondered how British Jewry, a particularly self-conscious community, responds to this scandal.

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