KIMCHE, JON

KIMCHE, JON (1909–1994), British editor and author. Born in Switzerland, he was educated in England where he took up journalism and specialized in Middle East affairs. From 1942 to 1946 he was editor of the Labour weekly Tribune. Kimche was a close friend of George Orwell, whom he first met in 1934 when they both worked as assistants in a bookshop in Hampstead, London. Kimche edited the Jewish Observer and Middle East Review, published by the British Zionist Federation, from 1952 to 1967. From 1968 he edited the monthly New Middle East. He wrote several books on the Middle East, including Both Sides of the Hill (1960), an account of the Israeli War of Liberation, written with his brother David Kimche; Seven Fallen Pillars (1953); and The Unromantics (1968), dealing with the Balfour Declaration. -ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: S. Wadhams (ed.), Remembering Orwell (1984).