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nday brunches with Elvis Presley’s songwriter; crossing Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin with his grandmother during communism; sitting across the breakfast room from Carlos the Jackal; visiting Prague as a student to bring Vaclav Havel materials from London in the months before Havel helped overthrow communism; Tom helping the Roma when almost no one else would; Tom’s close relationship with his godmother Sonia Orwell (the model for Julia, the heroine of her husband’s masterpiece ‘1984’); being in Manhattan on 9/11; the Mideast; the importance and legacy of the Holocaust; and other matters. (Conversation by zoom on June 28, 2020.) * Other videos in this “Conversations with friends” series can be viewed here: https://tomgross100.wixsite.com/chatswithtom Among them: * World-acclaimed Pianist Evgeny Kissin (Prague) https://youtu.be/6zKvyjlvleg * Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland (London) https://youtu.be/Y_3phYh8WMU * Jonathan Freedland & Tom Gross discuss left-wing antisemitism https://youtu.be/D8Zcppjh6Tw * Writer David Pryce-Jones (Wales) https://youtu.be/hK8kppwX7UI * Oscar-nominated filmmaker Hossein Amini (London) https://youtu.be/_llnKPTT0FE * The last Nazi-hunter Efraim Zuroff (Jerusalem) https://youtu.be/KEaUhSYX3hI * Leading political advisor (& former Thatcher speechwriter) John O’Sullivan (Budapest) https://youtu.be/TKspJwfsibg * Iraqi Kurd Bahra Saleh (Kirkuk, Iraq) https://youtu.be/tQM0a9qJ1Jk * Ethiopian-Israeli Orit Yasu (Shoham, near Tel Aviv) https://youtu.be/xKihFpFrOUg * Former British cabinet minister Rt Hon Lord (David) Young of Graffham https://youtu.be/AzmrBuZ0OoM * Writer Nidra Poller (Paris) https://youtu.be/wHky3gPi0oA * Charlotte Cunningham (London / Luxembourg) https://youtu.be/kva8JQ1Jgsw * Susan Loewenthal Lourenco (Berlin) https://youtu.be/wjS4DSh4DBw