34. Four generations. L to r: Leo, Sasha, Chimen and Jack. Hillway, 2009.
35. Chimen and Jack Lunzer in the Biblioteca Palatina, Parma. January 2000.
36. Chimen, Minna Keal and Ray Waterman, at lunch at Hillway, late 1990s.
37. Chimen and Tariq Ali in the master bedroom. Hillway, 2006.
38. Chimen taking a walk, early 1990s.
39. The exterior of 5 Hillway.
40. Chimen reflected in his hallway mirror.
41. The Machzikei Hadath Synagogue, Brick Lane, where Yehezkel was once the rabbi. It is now a mosque.
42. The master bedroom at Hillway.
43. Chimen’s ‘study’ at Hillway, long given over entirely to piles of books.
44. Woodcut from William Morris, News from Nowhere (1890). The author’s manuscript was one of Chimen’s most treasured possessions.
45. ‘À Versailles!’ A Communard with a red flag proclaiming ‘The Commune or Death!’ points his cannon towards Versailles, the base of the anti-Commune government. From L’Actualité, no. 3, April 1871.
46. Illustration from an early eighteenth-century Sefer Evronot, from Central Europe, in Chimen’s collection. This was a book used for calculating Jewish calendar dates.
47. ‘The Friends of Order’. Anonymous satirical print, 1871, showing the murder of the Republic by the French government led by Thiers.
48. Title page of the first complete translation of the Bible into Yiddish, printed in Amsterdam in 1678.
49. Chimen’s first edition of Spinoza’s Opera Posthuma (1677).
50. Illustrated manuscript wall placard for Sefirat ha-Omer, ‘Counting the days’ between Passover and Shavuot.
51. The eighteenth-century Armenian bible found in an unopened envelope in the study after Chimen’s death.
52. Letter from Chimen to Isaiah Berlin, 6 June 1969. One of several hundred letters from a correspondence that lasted for nearly forty years.
53. ‘Chimen Abramsky’s House of Books’, sketch by Theodor ‘Teddy’ Thomas, 1975.
54. Handwritten letter by Rosa Luxemburg from Chimen’s collection.
55. Letter from Harold Laski to Chimen, praising the end of anti-Semitism in Stalin’s Soviet Union. 4 October 1947.
Copyright
This ebook published in Great Britain by
Halban Publishers Ltd.
22 Golden Square
London W1F 9JW
2014
www.halbanpublishers.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Publishers.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–1–905559–65–7
Copyright © 2014 by Sasha Abramsky
Sasha Abramsky has asserted his right under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act,1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
All illustrations are courtesy of the author and his family.
Originally typeset by Spectra Titles, Norfolk
Originally printed in Great Britain by
Berforts Information Press, Stevenage
The House of Twenty Thousand Books Page 33