T. R. Fyvel

Raphael Joseph Feiwel (1907 – 22 June 1985), better known as Tosco R. Fyvel or T. R. Fyvel, was an author, journalist and literary editor. A noted Zionist, in 1936-7, he worked with Golda Meir in Palestine.

The T R Fyvel Book Award, awarded to a "book which has given new insight into issues or events, shown a perspective not often acknowledged, or given a platform to new voices", is one of the five Freedom of Expression awards presented by Index on Censorship.

Born in Cologne, Germany, his mother, from a Belarusian Jewish family, was a niece of Ahad Ha'am and had worked for Chaim Weizmann. His father, Berthold Feiwel, from a Moravian Jewish family, was an executive director of Keren Hayesod.

After graduating from Cambridge University, he moved to Palestine, where he spent some time as an assistant to Meir in the Histadrut. Returning to Britain, during the Second World War he worked in counter-intelligence.

Fyvel first met George Orwell in January 1940 when their mutual publisher, Frederic Warburg, introduced the two authors. Although Orwell did not agree with the ambition for an independent Jewish state in Palestine, they became friends and met sometimes at Warburg's home in Reading. The three of them planned a series of pamphlets/essays to be published by Secker & Warburg as Searchlight Books.

In 1945, he succeeded Orwell as literary editor of the Tribune newspaper when Orwell left to become a war correspondent for The Observer. Fyvel remained in this post until 1949. In the early 1950s he was a founder and contributor to Encounter. From 1973 to 1983, he was literary editor of The Jewish Chronicle.

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