Eric Silver (1) (1935–2008)

Eric Silver was born to an Anglo-Jewish family in Leeds, England. He won a scholarship to Oxford University, where he read philosophy, politics and economics. After working for local newspapers, in 1960 he joined the staff of The Guardian as a subeditor. From 1966 to 1967, he was deputy labor correspondent. He was sent to Israel in 1967 to cover the aftermath of the Six-Day War. Then in 1972, he was named Jerusalem correspondent of both The Guardian and The Observer, a post he held for the next 11 years. In 1983, he became India correspondent and traveled widely in the region, visiting Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Four years later, he and his wife Bridget decided to return to Jerusalem, where they owned a house, and he became a freelance writer. He was a regular contributor to the BBC World Service and did work for The Independent, the Jewish Chronicle, Jerusalem Report, Time magazine, and CNN. He wrote a critically-acclaimed biography of Menachem Begin called Begin: The Haunted Prophet, published in 1984. It was followed by The Book of the Just: The Unsung Heroes Who Rescued Jews from Hitler (1992), which won several prizes. After his death, his wife published By Eric Silver, Dateline Jerusalem (2011), a collection of his reportage from 1967 to 2008.