Lord Weidenfeld of Chelsea
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Born in Vienna in 1919, George Weidenfeld left Austria for England in 1938. During World War II he worked with the BBC Overseas Service and in 1948 founded the publishing firm, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, with Nigel Nicolson. In 1949 he became Political Advisor and Chef de Cabinet in Israel to President Weizmann, and spent a year in this capacity.

A British citizen since 1946, Lord Weidenfeld was awarded a peerage in 1976. From 1992 to 1994, he was Vice-Chairman of the University of Oxford Campaign and since 1994, Vice-President of the Oxford University Development Programme. He is involved with the Europaeum, a network of ten leading European universities. In 1996 he founded together with Lord Rothschild and Lord Alexander the Club of Three (Britain-France-Germany) which later incorporated AMEURUS (America-Europe-Russia). His Institute for Strategic Dialogue, created in 2006, runs a number of political task forces and cultural and educational bridge-building initiatives. Also in 2006 he initiated the Weidenfeld Scholarships and Leadership Programme in Oxford.

He has several honorary degrees from universities across Europe including the Diplomatic College Vienna and the University of Exeter. He is an Honorary Fellow of St. Anne's College and St. Peter's Colleges, Oxford and of King’s College London. He was made an Honorary Senator of Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn (1996), and Magister, Diplomatic College Vienna (1999). He received the Charlemagne Medal for European Media in Aachen (Germany, 2000) and the London Book Fair/Trilogy Lifetime Achievement Award for International Publishing in 2007. He holds the German Knights Commanders Cross (Badge & Star) of the Order of Merit (1991), the Austrian Cross of Honour First Class for Arts and Science (2002), the Decoration of Honour in Gold for Services to the County of Vienna (2003), the Italian Grand Officer of the Order of Merit (2005) and the Order of Merit of the Land Baden-Württemberg (2008). In 2008 he signed the Golden Book of the City of Potsdam (Germany). In 2009 he received the Teddy Kollek Life Achievement Award in Jerusalem.

Among other appointments he is Chairman of Weidenfeld & Nicolson; President of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue; Director of Cheyne Capital Management; Honorary Chairman, Board of Governors, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; member of Investcorp European Advisory Board; Consultant to the Bertelsmann Foundation and columnist for Die Welt, Welt am Sonntag and Bild am Sonntag.

Blog Entries by Lord Weidenfeld of Chelsea

Is Dinner With David Cameron Worth £250,000?

(18) Comments | Posted 3 April 2012 | 14:19

Privileged access of grand donors to political parties to leading members of the government, and subsequent, frequent malpractice, is a constant topic amongst the British public.

Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, are heavily criticised in the press, mainly by the Rupert Murdoch controlled...

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Weakness on the Part of Democracies Discourages Those Who Strive for Freedom

(313) Comments | Posted 13 March 2012 | 18:32

The grim question if, how or when Teheran's nuclear armament could be thwarted by using force is on the minds of insiders and observers in the free world. Gradually the theory that an end in terror is preferable to terror without end is gaining the upper hand. The gruesome scenario...

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No Politeness Please

(118) Comments | Posted 6 March 2012 | 15:28

It was a heroic death in the truest sense: Marie Colvin, war correspondent of the London Sunday Times, defied all dangers in order to report about the scandalous deeds of the Assad regime in Syria.

She fell victim to a rocket attack on the specially designated press compound for...

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The Angry Ones

(54) Comments | Posted 3 February 2012 | 07:39

Who are the incubators of a real democratic renewal in the Arab Spring? After talking to young Egyptians, among them many intellectuals, who returned to their homeland having studied at prestigious English universities, I feel confronted with a rather contradictory picture.

They fight against corruption, religious fanaticism, for human...

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An Icy Winter Threatens

(86) Comments | Posted 12 December 2011 | 11:16

Gloomy weeks for the western world: the elections in Egypt and Russia threaten to transform the Arab spring as well as the hoped for political thaw with Moscow into an icy winter. In both cases the high expectations of a democratic development have proved to be bitter illusions.

The...

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Iran and the Bomb

(573) Comments | Posted 25 November 2011 | 14:48

The latest report by the International Atomic Energy Agency about Iran's nuclear armament exploded like a bomb onto the world of Washington think tanks.

In two high-ranking round-tables, of which one is particularly close to President Obama and the other to the Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the topics of...

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After the Fall of three Arab Dictators - What Next?

(107) Comments | Posted 27 October 2011 | 20:35

The first three versions of regime change during the Arab Spring - unhindered escape of the Tunisian President, imprisonment and criminal proceedings in Egypt and mob law in Libya - have created a momentum that will be hard to stall.

The case of Libya shows that decisive action, i.e....

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The Syrian Problem

(13) Comments | Posted 2 October 2011 | 15:53

"February 11 was the culmination of the Arab revolution. On February 12, the counterrevolution began." This is how two Middle East experts - the Palestinian Oxford don, Hussein Agha, and the Washington political scientist, Robert Malley - are summing up the situation in the latest edition of the New York...

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