Jillian Becker

Jillian Becker (born 2 June 1932, Johannesburg, South Africa)[1] is a novelist,[2] prize-winning story-writer, critic, journalist[3] and lecturer, best known internationally as a writer, researcher, and authority on the subject of terrorism[4] and a prominent atheist.[5]

Jillian Becker
Born (1932-06-02) 2 June 1932
Johannesburg, South Africa
Pen nameJillian Becker
NationalityBritish and American
CitizenshipBritain and United States
EducationBA
Alma materUniversity of the Witwatersrand
Notable worksHitler's Children, The Keep, The PLO
Notable awardsPushcart Prize
Website
www.theatheistconservative.com

Life

Her father, Dr Bernard Friedman, was a South African surgeon and politician who co-founded the anti-apartheid Progressive Party. Becker says in book jacket biographies that she was "undereducated" at Roedean School in Johannesburg. At the age of 14 she won first prize in a national essay competition on the evils of race-discrimination set by the (anti-apartheid) Institute of Race Relations.

She graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand where she made a lifelong platonic friendship with the scientist, Lewis Wolpert and the writer, Lionel Abraham. She left her first husband, Michael Geber, in South Africa to live in Italy with her second husband, Gerry Becker, later moving to Mountfort Crescent off Barnsbury Square, in London. It was here that Becker's friend, Sylvia Plath, came to stay with her young children in the days immediately before Plath committed suicide and it is here that Becker's book about Plath's last days, "Giving Up" is based. Becker has been a British citizen since 1960.[1][6]

She had two marriages which ended in divorce, succeeded by a long relationship with Bernhard Adamczewski who filled the triple role of co-director of IST (see below), computer manager and explosives expert, having become qualified in the use of explosives when he had worked in the South African gold mines in the 1950s. The marriages produced three daughters and six grandchildren.

Becker is on the council of the Freedom Association.[7] She has appeared in numerous television broadcasts and been interviewed many times on radio: for instance she appeared with Yehudi Menuhin, Richard Clutterbuck and others in After Dark (an Open World production) in December 1989. She lives in California.[8]

She is the manager and editor of The Atheist Conservative blog.[9] She is a lifelong friend of the atheist scientist, Lewis Wolpert, and she knew and frequently corresponded with the famous atheist philosopher, Antony Flew, and the Irish artist husband and wife pair, Philip and Barry Castle. Indeed, Barry painted a portrait of Becker and Adamczewski. A series of biographical sketches about southern African writers she has known, such as Doris Lessing and Lionel Abrahams and others has been published in the New English Review in 2020.[10]

A lecture series titled The Jillian Becker Annual Lecture was launched under the auspices of The Freedom Association in 2018. The invited lecturers are required to speak on the general theme of the importance of individual freedom and/or of the nation-state. The inaugural lecture was given on 24 March 2018, at Bournemouth, UK, by Dr. Anthony Daniels, also known as Theodore Dalrymple. The title of his lecture was "Threats to Freedom".[11] The second lecture was delivered on 28 November 2019, by Douglas Carswell, former UKIP MP, its title being: "Cheer UP! Why The World Is Getting Better".[12] The third lecture was delivered on 3 February 2020, by Professor Simon Heffer, historian, author, Sunday Telegraph columnist, atheist, on the necessity for freedom of speech, particularly in the universities.

Published works

Her early work (see below) is mostly fiction which was banned in her native South Africa, under the apartheid regime.

She has written an account of the death of her friend, the poet Sylvia Plath, who stayed with Becker for the last weekend of her life.[13] Dissatisfied with the biographers' treatments and after seeing the film script to Sylvia (and declining the opportunity to have anything to do with the film), Becker decided to write her own account of Plath's death: Giving Up: the last days of Sylvia Plath. Becker was also a friend and near neighbour of Douglas Cleverdon, whose wife, Nest, gave Becker spare clothes for Plath's children during the period just after the suicide was discovered. When her memoir The Last Days of Sylvia Plath was published in Britain in 2002, its revelations were the subject of a major feature by the Independent on Sunday, provoking both supportive and hostile comments. The printed correspondence brought to light new facts about the poet's life.

Her most famous book, Hitler’s Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang, is about the German Red Army Faction. The book was chosen by Golo Mann as Newsweek (Europe) book of the year 1977[14] and serialised in newspapers in London, Oslo and Tokyo.

The PLO: The Rise and Fall of the Palestine Liberation Organization was commissioned by Weidenfeld & Nicolson and published in 1984. Becker spent months in Lebanon during the war in which Israel drove the PLO out of that country. She claimed to have retrieved secret documents from ruins of bombed PLO office buildings and to have interviewed Lebanese of all denominations and Palestinians who had experienced PLO oppression, as well as supporters, members and leaders of the PLO.[15]

Other works include novels and short stories (see below) and numerous contributions to periodicals, such as Simone Weil: A Saint for our Time? She has written for The Times, The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, The Times Literary Supplement, The Salisbury Review, Encounter, The Quarterly Review,and Standpoint; and in the US, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, Terrorism an international journal,The New English Review, and The New Criterion. She has contributed to scholarly articles on terrorism in the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Institute for the Study of Terrorism

In the 1980s, Becker served in a multi-party working group to advise the British Parliament on measures to combat international terrorism. She was also consulted by the embassies of several countries affected by indigenous terrorist organisations, some of which were supported by foreign nation states. In many of these cases, terrorist activity was an aspect of proxy wars, or what Becker called "the hot spots of the Cold War".[16]

In 1985, with Lord Chalfont, a former minister in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, she founded the "Institute for the Study of Terrorism" (IST) of which she was executive director from 1985 to 1990. With Chalfont on the presiding council were Baroness Cox, who was then deputy speaker of the House of Lords, and Lord Orr-Ewing. The institute's International Advisory Council included experts in many Western countries on terrorism, security, weaponry, and geo-politics. In the Institute itself Becker worked with a small staff of researchers and translators. Bernhard Adamczewski was her co-director at IST.[16]

IST kept in close touch with the Bomb Disposal Unit of the Metropolitan Police and the Airport Police Authorities. On some occasions IST received information, for instance about the smuggling across international borders of explosive material, before it had been conveyed by official channels, and was able to alert the relevant authorities. Institute personnel undertook to test airport security by smuggling imitation bombs in luggage through international airports, and found it deficient.

The chief purpose of the institute was to gather intelligence about terrorist organisations and their membership, and keep the British Parliament and the media informed about them, countering the propaganda and exposing pretexts and lies put out by the violent organisations themselves.[17] IST commissioned expert studies of terrorist groups and distributed them to members of both Houses of Parliament, to newspapers, individual journalists, radio and television news channels, foreign embassies, Customs and Excise, police forces, military experts, and university departments. It also held seminars addressed by experts in relevant subjects from many countries in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and the Middle and Far East.

IST cooperated with the Institute for the European Defence and Strategic Studies, (set up by Peter Blaker, Baron Blaker) in the organisation of an international conference on defence at Windsor in 1986. Also, with the Faculty of Laws of the University of London, the Institute held an international conference in 1988 at Ditchley Park, the venue of many Anglo-American top-level conferences. The three-day event was opened by the Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd. One of the most important addresses was given by John Hermon, Chief of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Jillian Becker was an invited speaker at the June 1984 "conference on Terrorism" organized by Binyamin Netanyahu's Jonathan Institute in Washington, D.C., opened by Secretary of State George Shultz, and including UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Midge Decter, Edwin Meese, Jack Kemp, Lord Chalfont, historian Bernard Lewis, and columnists George Will and Charles Krauthammer.

When the coalition forces led by the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Becker was retained by The Telegraph to provide the newspaper with information and articles as required on terrorist groups and activities in the Middle East.

IST was a registered charity, supported mainly by charitable donations but also partly self-supporting by providing expert consultancy and supplying reports to private companies, such as those needing risk assessments when expanding into foreign countries.

In 1990 the institute was forced to close as many donors stopped their contributions, convinced that with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Communist satellites in Eastern Europe, there would be no more internationally sponsored terrorism. Becker warned that terrorism, far from being over, would become an even greater menace in the coming years, but she failed to persuade donors of her point of view and so lost their support.

The archive of the institute was bought by the University of Leicester, and was one of the collections with which the Scarman Centre, a research facility for the Department of Criminology, was founded. (The Scarman Centre is now Leicester University Department of Criminology)

HBO, the American cable and satellite television network, entered into a contract with Becker and Adamczewski for a story of their terrorist-hunting days, and paid them a retainer each month during the period when the play was being commissioned and written . The writer chosen by HBO was the famous TV dramatist Lynda La Plante. She completed the play, but HBO came under new management and cancelled the production.

Cambridge Union Debate, Lent 1985, Jillian Becker leading for the motion. Opponent, Sir Malcolm Rifkind KCMG QC.

RADIO:

BBC: World This Weekend World Service The World Today (multiple times) The World Tonight (multiple times) Outlook (multiple times) PM 24 Hours World at One (multiple times) Newsbeat Woman's Hour Jimmy Young Show African Service German Service (in German)

LONDON BROADCASTING COMPANY

RADIO YELEFIS EIREANN: OPINION (multiple times)

AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION CANADIAN BRODACSTING CORPORATION SOUTH AFRICAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION (multiple times) ABC ISRAEL RADIO

TELEVISION BBC: Tonight BBC: Panorama BBC: After Dark ITN Bavarian Television (West Germany) Canadian Television ABC Television West German Television, London Radio Telefis Eireann, Television Israel Television South African Television: Weekly Magazine Current Affairs

Lectures at Universities, Colleges, Schools:

Brunel University (1978) London University - Bedford College (1978) Bramshill Police College (1979) Hendon Police College (1987) Loughborough Grammar School (1979) St. Paul's School for Girls (1980) Francis Holland School for Girls (1980) University of Kent at Canterbury (1981) Oxford University St. Anthony's College (1987) Royal College of Defence Studies London (March 1983)

Conferences:

ISODARCO – Pugwash Conference – Ariccia, Italy, (August 1978) Institute for International Scientific Exchange West Berlin (November 1978) International Society for the Study of Comparative Public Law University College Cardiff, Wales, (December 1978) Centre for Contemporary Studies London (May 1982) PEN International (October 1982) Convention Internationale sur le Terrorisme Paris Other speakers: Raymond Aron, Simone Veil, Vladimir Bukovsky (January 1983) British Foreign and Commonwealth Office at Wiston House, Wilton Park, as Keynote speaker. (January 1987) Hanns Seidel Stiftung Hamburg (January 1987) Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies with the Institute for the Study of Terrorism Windsor Speakers included Jean Francois Revel, Roger Scruton, Paul Hollander. (August 1986 and July 1987) Institute for the Study of Terrorism and Faculty of Laws of University College London Ditchley Park Oxfordshire as Co-chairman. (April 1988) University of Pretoria after first democratic election as Keynote Speaker (June 1984) Washington, D.C. Jonathan Institute Conference (1984)

Jillian Becker was member of an informal study group convened periodically at the House of Lords by the Baroness Cox to recommend means of countering propaganda in educational curricula.

In the early 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, Jillian Becker founded and edited "The Blue Angel", a monthly newspaper for the Conservative Party in Islington, London.

Invited participant Woman of the Year luncheon 1987

Books

Selected fiction
  • THE KEEP Chatto & Windus, London 1967 Penguin 1971 ISBN 0-14-003204-5; ISBN 978-0-14-003204-8 reissued as A PENGUIN MODERN CLASSIC 2008 ISBN 978-0-14-318561-1
  • A CRY IN THE DAYTIME (inter alia, South African Writing Today edited by Lionel Abrahams and Nadine Gordimer Penguin 1967 ISBN 978-1-199-12324-4 ISBN 1199123242)
  • THE STENCH (inter alia, On the Edge of the World edited by A.D.Donker 1974 ISBN 0-949937-76-2 ISBN 978-0949937766) Re-published in the USA earned a Pushcart Prize award.
  • THE KEEP Penguin SA, Modern Classics 2008 ISBN 978-0-14-318561-1
  • THE UNION, Chatto & Windus London 1971 ISBN 0-7011-1625-0
  • THE VIRGINS Gollancz London 1976 David Philip Cape Town 1986 ISBN 978-0-86486-050-7 (0864860501)
  • L: A NOVEL HISTORY Ferrington London 2005 ISBN 1-898490-46-5
  • A TOUR IN A FOREIGN LIFE eBookPartnership USA 2014 ISBN 978-1-78301-452-1
  • SECRET LOVE AND OTHER STORIES Gothenburg Books USA 2019 ISBN 978-1-7333081-1-3; ISBN 978-1-7333081-0-6
  • MORDEC RAIDS ENGLAND (THE THRILLING ADVENTURES OF MORDEC THE VIKING) Gothenburg Books 2018 ISBN 1732727503; ISBN 978-1732727502
  • MORDEC'S QUEST (THE THRILLING ADVENTURES OF MORDEC THE VIKING)Gothenburg Books 2018 ISBN 173272752X; ISBN 978-1732727526
  • MORDEC & THE LOST BOYS (THE THRILLING ADVENTURES OF MORDEC THE VIKING) Gothenburg Books 2018 ISBN 1732727562; ISBN 978-1732727564
  • MORDEC & THE HIDDEN HAND (THE THRILLING ADVENTURES OF MORDEC THE VIKING) Gothenburg Books 2018 ISBN 1732727546; ISBN 978-1732727540
  • MORDEC THE CONQUEROR (THE THRILLING ADVENTURES OF MORDEC THE VIKING) Gothenburg Books 2018 ISBN 1732727589; ISBN 978-1732727588

Non-fiction
  • HITLER’S CHILDREN:THE STORY OF THE BAADER-MEINHOF TERRORIST GANG commissioned by the New York publisher Lippincott. Translated into 8 other languages including Japanese. ISBN 978-0-397-01153-7

Lippincott New York 1977 Michael Joseph London 1977 2nd. Edition Panther (Granada) London 1978 7 Other editions: Germany, France, Spain, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, Japan 3rd. Edition Pickwick Books London 1989

  • THE P.L.O.:THE RISE AND FALL OF THE PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANIZATION

Weidenfeld & Nicolson London 1984 ISBN 0-297-78299-1 ISBN 978-0297782995 St. Martin's Press New York 1984

  • THE RED ARMY FACTION: ANOTHER FINAL BATTLE ON THE STAGE OF HISTORY Cultural Notes No. 12 ISBN 0-948317-54-X

Memoir
  • GIVING UP:THE LAST DAYS OF SYLVIA PLATH

Ferrington London 2002 ISBN 1-898490-31-7 ISBN 978-1898490319 St. Martin's Press New York 2003

As editor
  • THE SOVIET UNION AND TERRORISM by Roberta Goren, with an Introduction by Robert Conquest, Unwin Hyman, London, 1984[24]

Specialist publications
  • THE SOVIET CONNECTION: STATE SPONSORSHIP OF TERRORISM Institute for European Defence & Strategic Studies, occasional paper No 13: 'The Soviet Connection': 'State Sponsorship of Terrorism' by Jillian Becker. London 1985 ISBN 0-907967-60-4 ISBN 978-0907967606
  • EXPLODING THE MYTH OF THE PLO London 1986
  • NEO-NAZISM: A THREAT TO EUROPE? Alliance for IEDSS London 1993 ISBN 0-907967-47-7 ISBN 978-0907967477
  • THE STRUGGLE FOR WHAT? TERRORISM IN WEST GERMANY IST London 1988
  • ANOTHER FINAL BATTLE ON THE STAGE OF HISTORY Libertarian Alliance London 1988 ISBN 1-85637-400-9 ISBN 978-1856374002
  • THE MAKING AND MEANING OF BRITISHNESS: NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE 21st CENTURY Right Now Press Ltd 2007 ISBN 9780954053420
  • SENDERO LUMINOSO: A NEW REVOLUTIONARY MODEL? Institute for the Study of Terrorism, London, 1987

As part-author CONTEMPORARY TERROR: STUDIES IN SUB-STATE VIOLENCE ed. David Carlton and Carlo Schaerf Essay: CASE STUDY, FEDERAL GERMANY Macmillan London 1981 BRITISH PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM ed. Paul Wilkinson Essay: ANOTHER FINAL BATTLE ON THE STAGE OF HISTORY George Allen and Unwin London 1981 TERRORISM: HOW THE WEST CAN WIN ed. Benjamin Netanyahu Farrar Strauss and Girou Inc. New York 1986

Biographical and literary entries in reference works
  • Encyclopaedia Judaica (under: South African Literature)
  • Proceedings of the Swinton Circle
  • Smith, Rowland, Leisure, Law, and Loathing: Matrons, Mistresses, Mothers in the Fiction of Nadine Gordimer and Jillian Becker, 28 World Literature Written in English 41 (Spring 1988).
  • Rebecca West Papers review HItler's Children[25]
  • Chapman, Michael. Southern African Literatures (1996) Longman Higher Education; ISBN 0-582-05307-2:
  • International Authors and Writers Who's Who from 1976
  • Dictionary of International Biography from 1976
  • Contemporary Authors vols. 77-80
  • Index of Censorship 4/1973
  • Exile And Tradition ed. Rowland Smith, Longman
  • South African Literature by Stephen Gray, Rex Collings, London
  • Standard Encyclopedia of Southern Africa Cape Town

Leading articles on the author and her work: Der Spiegel; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; Suddeitsche Zeitung; Daily Telegraph (by Rebecca West); Time; New York Review of Books.

Interview with the author: The Times (London), 26 January 1987

A characteristic of literary magazines in the 1950s, one that did not change much during the 1960s was the fact that these journals mainly published works by white writers. Contrast presented stories and poems by many of the most important white writers of this period. Among the contributors of fiction were Anthony Delius, Nadine Gordimer, Jenny Hobbs, Laurence Lerner, Ruth Miller, Alan Paton, and the editor, Jack Cope, himself. Cope, Gordimer, and Hobbs also wrote stories for the volumes edited by the PEN Club, which featured Lionel Abrahams, Perseus Adams, Stephen Gray, Geoffrey Haresnape, and Lewis Sowden as well. Finally, the best known writers who published short fiction in The Purple Renoster were Jillian Becker, Myrna Blumberg, Yvonne Burgess, and Barney Simon.

  • Contemporary Authors published by Thompson Gale

References
  1. "Sylvia Plath: Jillian Becker on the poet's last days". BBC News. 10 February 2010. Retrieved 9 March 2015.
  2. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jillian-Becker/e/B001IYTNSM
  3. https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/hitlers-children-by-jillian-becker-carlos-portrait-of-a-terrorist-by-colin-smith/
  4. https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/digitallibrary/smof/counsellor/jenkins/oa10569/40-274-12009466-oa10567-001-2017.pdf
  5. https://theatheistconservative.com/about/
  6. "New Penguin Modern Classic: The Keep by Jillian Becker". Penguin Books South Africa. 29 September 2008.
  7. The Freedom Association - Council and Supporters Archived 7 April 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  8. "Jillian Becker | Authors | Macmillan". Us.macmillan.com. Retrieved 20 June 2015.
  9. "1. About us". The Atheist Conservative. 6 May 2009. Retrieved 17 November 2017.
  10. https://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=190232
  11. https://www.tfa.net/tags/theodore_dalrymple
  12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qfWT9Lm7mA
  13. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21336933
  14. Alvarez, Alberto Martin; Tristán, Eduardo Rey (5 August 2016). Revolutionary Violence and the New Left: Transnational Perspectives. ISBN 9781317291374.
  15. "The PLO: The Rise and Fall of the Palestine Liberation Organization". Authorhouse.
  16. "Becker, Jillian (Ruth) 1932-". Archived from the original on 14 November 2018. Retrieved 18 January 2016 – via HighBeam Research.
  17. Malcher, Alan (1991). "The 1990s – the Decade of International Unrest?". The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles. 64 (3): 209–214. doi:10.1177/0032258X9106400305. S2CID 148950296.
  18. Podhoretz, John (15 January 2013). "Egypt's U.S.-Subsidized Politics of Hate". Commentarymagazine.com. Retrieved 20 June 2015.
  19. Jillian Becker. "Nadine Gordimer: 'Comrade Madam' | Standpoint". Standpointmag.co.uk. Retrieved 20 June 2015.
  20. https://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=190394&sec_id=190394
  21. https://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=190312&sec_id=190312
  22. https://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=190364&sec_id=190364
  23. https://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=190258&sec_id=190258
  24. Seth Mandel (22 February 2013). "Anti-Semitism in France and the Ghost of Emile Combes". Commentarymagazine.com. Retrieved 20 June 2015.
  25. "Rebecca West papers". Lib.utulsa.edu. Archived from the original on 28 July 2009. Retrieved 20 June 2015.
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