Anthony Julius

Anthony Julius is a partner in the law firm Mischon de Reya, where he specialises in defamation. He has completed a PhD on T.S. Eliot’s anti-semitism.

Fouling the nest

Anthony Julius, 8 April 1993

A lawyer defends the reputation of his firm, one of the oldest and most profitable of City practices, against a charge of anti-semitism. Jewish himself, he concedes that he is the only Jewish partner in the firm. He is not prepared, however, to attribute this to prejudice. There are other explanations, chief among them is that Jews have tended not to want to work at the firm. He has not experienced any anti-semitism there; he is willing to take his partners as he finds them. And yet, he is quite plainly proud of having been made a partner: he is proud, that is, of being an exceptional Jew. Someone then remarks that his firm in fact has a second Jewish partner. ‘Oh yes, of course,’ he says; and it becomes obvious that he wanted the credit of being the only Jew at the firm, even though this undermined his defence of it.

Overstatements: Anti-Semitism

Diarmaid MacCulloch, 10 June 2010

The leprous spawn of scattered Israel Spreads its contagion in your English blood; Teeming corruption rises like a flood Whose fountain swelters in the womb of hell. Your Jew-kept politicians buy...

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Undesirable

Tom Paulin, 9 May 1996

Looking at the University of Oxford’s Informal Guide to the English faculty’s lecture list for Trinity term 1996, I find that the Professor of Poetry, James Fenton, will give a...

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