Chas Newkey-Burden's Blog, page 33

When love is a healing flame

The tragedy of Amy Winehouse's death in July is still in the memory, so I thought I would share two happy developments for her family. Amy's brother Alex married Riva Lefton on Sunday. Riva is from Blackpool, and the ceremony was held in the town, at the Pleasure Beach. Although they will have felt Amy's [...]

Speaking at Eton College

It takes something special for me to miss The X Factor, especially when a double elimination is rumoured: this Sunday evening I will be speaking about Israel to 300 sixth-formers at Eton College. It is only a 10-minute walk home afterwards, then I can catch-up on who got the boot on The X Factor. By [...]

New ideas? Positivity? Yes please!

A few months back, the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) launched a bold new campaign, which provoked a lot of debate. Personally, I think the campaign has things going for it, particularly its creative and imaginative spirit. I haven't set foot in a university campus for over a decade, so I will assume UJS members [...]

Pete Townshend and human morality

The Who guitarist Pete Townshend has said the internet is harming the music industry. Delivering the inaugural 'John Peel lecture', he attacked Apple's iTunes service, and also those who download music without paying for it. 'I wonder what has gone wrong with human morality,' he said. Whether he has a point or not, what was [...]

Nachman on Monday

'The world is like a revolving die, and everything turns over, and man changes to angel and angel to man, and the head to the foot and the foot to the head. So all things turn over and revolve and are changed, this into that and that into this, what is above to what is [...]

A miracle in Ashdod

What it's like running a marathon

This coming Monday, thousands of runners will brave the Dublin Marathon. I ran that Marathon in 2005 and 2006. I'm often asked what running a marathon is like. As a roundabout way of answering that, here are 10 of my marathon-running memories… 1. It is not the race itself but the preparation that is the [...]

Her friends called her Mummy

A coroner has recorded a verdict of misadventure at an inquest into the death of Amy Winehouse. In the light of this news, I'm republishing the column I wrote for the Jewish Chronicle a few days after her death. Amy Winehouse was called many things during her short, eventful life: a genius, a junkie, a [...]

The Rebbe on Monday

Starting in 1986, the Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe maintained a weekly tradition called 'Sunday dollars'. Each Sunday, he would stand in an alcove outside his office, and hand a dollar bill to each of the thousands of people who queued outside. The recipients would be told to donate the dollar to a charity. He would also give [...]

'To do' list

Saddam Hussein ☑ – Osama Bin Laden ☑ – Col Gaddafi ☑ – the second Flotilla ☑ – the Flytilla ☑ – Tottenham Hotspur FC's Uefa Champions League dream ☑ – the entire stag beetle species ☐ Anything you'd like to add?