Major Farran's hat

Abstract

Major Farran's hat: murder, scandal and Britain's war against Jewish terrorism, 1945–47, by David Cesarani, London, William Heinemann, 2009, 400 pp., ISBN 0-4340-1844-9 In May 1947, 16 year-old Alexander Rubowitz went missing in Jerusalem after putting up posters for the Zionist underground. The evidence for his abduction, torture and murder pointed to Major Roy Farran, a highly decorated ex-SAS officer who had been recruited to Palestine to head an anti-terrorist police unit. This is the focus of Professor David Cesarani's new book, Major Farran's Hat: Murder, Scandal, and Britain's War Against Jewish Terrorism, 1945–47. By re-examining the Farran case, Cesarani also looks into the causes and consequences of the murder, leading him to pay substantial attention to the activities of Zionist terrorist groups outside of Palestine and their attempts to attack British targets both in Europe and within Britain. One of the victims of this campaign was Farran's brother who was killed by a parcel bomb. This article analyses Cesarani's account of the terrorist campaign while also drawing on other historians, sources and the memoirs of the people involved.