It's a truism that every wretch in the village is a king on the day of the pogrom because he is not a Jew. And here is his book. - Tanya Gold

Notting Hill is two cities with two kinds of stories, the dreamlike and the deadly. One Notting Hill contains residents who paid more capital gains tax than three major British cities in 2020; in the other, looms Grenfell Tower, swaddled in rippling tarpaulin. These two depend on each other, because you only need a dreamworld if reality is unjust. Nowhere else in London is so polarised, or practices self-worship like this.

I now know my generation of Jews is the luckiest in modern history. I never saw antisemitism in my youth. I know that others did. OK, a boy at my school shouted, "Jew" at me once, but I knew it was lust. Likewise, a boy at my college – a devout Christian – also shouted "Jew" at me once, but I think his DNA test would come up 25 per cent Ashkenazi Jewish at least, and we both knew it.

When I was young, being female was not something to enjoy, but to navigate carefully: there was always a terrible jeopardy in it. When I look back on the mild workplace assaults and the insinuations — so long ago I feel they were directed at a different woman — what strikes me most is how little they had to do with sex. I don't think men who harass women at work want sex: at least not principally. It is a function of inadequacy and the dominion that masks it: putting you on your knees, where you belong.