Weidenfeld, (Arthur) George, Baron
WEIDENFELD, (Arthur) GEORGE, Baron
WEIDENFELD, (Arthur) GEORGE, Baron (1919– ), British publisher. Weidenfeld was born in Vienna. Following the Anschluss in 1938, he immigrated to Great Britain and joined the BBC where he worked in overseas intelligence and as a commentator on European affairs. Weidenfeld was a lecturer at Chatham House and in 1945 founded Contact, a journal of contemporary affairs and the arts. In 1948, together with Nigel Nicolson, he set up Weidenfeld and Nicolson, a large British publishing house, whose program is divided equally between general literature, academic books, and art and illustrated productions, and publishes the works of many Israeli scholars. In 1969 a subsidiary company was established in Jerusalem.
Weidenfeld was political adviser to President Chaim *Weizmann from 1949 to 1950, and his close association with Israel dates from that period. He was later chairman of the Board of Governors of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and a member of the Board of Governors of the Weizmann Institute of Science. In 1969 Weidenfeld was knighted and in 1976 given a life peerage. Weidenfeld was one of the best known and most successful of postwar British publishers and produced many works of Jewish interest by a range of Jewish notables, among them Moshe *Dayan, Dr. Henry *Kissinger, Golda *Meir, and Sir Martin *Gilbert. He was the author of an autobiography, Remembering My Good Friends, in 1994.
[Asher Weill]