Israel Rank

First published in 1907 Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal is perhaps best known as the inspiration for the classic Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, which was voted the seventh greatest British film of all time by readers of Total Film magazine in 2004.

It has often been suggested that Israel Rank is an anti-Semitic novel but this is untrue. What Horniman does is to use his characters and the novel's plot as a vehicle to explore and parody the anti-Semitism that was rife in...