Claire Allfree, Freelance Journalist Profile

Articles

'As the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, it's my duty to keep these stories alive'

1 week ago | telegraph.co.uk | Claire Allfree

Emmerdale actress Louisa Clein on being a 'proud Zionist', the rise of anti-Semitism, and her new podcast celebrating Holocaust survivorsIn 1942, a German-born Jew named Henry Wermuth attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Aware the Führer would be travelling by train past the Polish town of Bochnia, he sneaked out at night from the nearby Nazi labour camp where he had been working and piled logs and rocks onto the railway track.
Anne Diamond on surviving her son's death, a brutal divorce and now cancer

1 week ago | telegraph.co.uk | Claire Allfree

The veteran breakfast presenter reflects on a life of dizzying highs and heartbreaking lowsAnne Diamond is passing judgment on the sofa on which she is sitting in a private room at Le Manoir, the Oxfordshire restaurant and hotel close to where she lives, run by her friend Raymond Blanc. "It's got a nice firm cushion. But yours is too soft. You can't get out of it very easily," she says. She knows a bit about sofas, of course.
Dive into the best literary fiction out now

1 week ago | dailymail.co.uk | Claire Allfree

Dive into the best literary fiction out now; GIRL, 1983 by Linn Ullmann, THE DIRECTOR by Daniel Kehlmann, ALLEGRO PASTEL by Leif RandtBy CLAIRE ALLFREE Published: 08:10 EDT, 30 May 2025 | Updated: 08:10 EDT, 30 May 2025 GIRL, 1983 by Linn Ullmann (Hamish Hamilton £18.99, 272pp)LINN Ullmann comes from impressive stock: she’s the daughter of Liv Ullmann and the Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman, and she wrote beautifully about both in her 2015 memoir Unquiet.
‘I saw Mum on stage marrying a stranger and started to cry’

2 weeks ago | msn.com | Claire Allfree

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
‘I saw Mum on stage marrying a stranger and started to cry’

2 weeks ago | msn.com | Claire Allfree

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
Imelda Staunton and her daughter Bessie Carter: ‘I saw Mum on stage marrying a stranger and started to cry’

2 weeks ago | independent.co.uk | Claire Allfree

InterviewThe mother and daughter make a marvellous pair on stage in ‘Mrs Warren’s Profession’. Claire Allfree sits down with the duo to talk Academy Awards, the Harry Potter reboot, and what younger actors can learn from the late Queen’s work ethicWhen her daughter Bessie was small, Imelda Staunton would read her bedtime stories. “I’d say something like, ‘And then the witch came in,’” says Staunton, cackling away like a wrinkled old woman.
'I turned down films involving Nazis'

2 weeks ago | telegraph.co.uk | Claire Allfree

The actress on how her German identity has affected her career, Hollywood's cruel treatment of ageing stars and new show Little DisastersDiane Kruger has avoided looking at the trailer for her new TV show, Little Disasters.
Simon Armitage: ‘The nub of being poet laureate seems to be being asked what the point is of being poet laureate’

3 weeks ago | independent.co.uk | Claire Allfree

The Saturday InterviewThe esteemed writer speaks with Claire Allfree about the misconceptions of his royal role, why all nature poetry is now innately conservationist – and that infamous and ‘scary’ Morrissey interviewThe second poem in Simon Armitage’s new poetry collection is titled “Drey” – a reference to the small hanging baskets of branches in which squirrels live. Armitage describes a drey as a “twig and leaf crow’s nest squat/ wombed with feathers and moss”.
1536: Gen Z does Tudor England

3 weeks ago | telegraph.co.uk | Claire Allfree

Pickett posits that the treatment of Anne Boleyn by Henry and his court - effectively a proto-case of slut-shaming - is a paradigm moment of almost mythic force in the virulent history of the gender wars. She gives her thesis lively succour too, as the news of further arrests and the shift in public opinion in London against the Queen gather like a dust cloud on the horizon, turning this summer-scorched pocket of merrie England into a place of fomenting male violence and sexual hatred.
'A modern day Jane Austen': The best Literary Fiction out now

3 weeks ago | dailymail.co.uk | Claire Allfree

'A modern day Jane Austen': The best Literary Fiction out now - The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong, Liquid by Mariam Rahmani, A New New Me by Helen Oyeyemi By CLAIRE ALLFREE Published: 08:03 EDT, 13 May 2025 | Updated: 08:03 EDT, 13 May 2025 The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong (Cape £20, 416pp) There’s not much obvious gladness around in feted young author Ocean Vuong’s second novel, which tackles the treacherous promise of the American dream through the frequently addled lens of its...