Winner in the eccentricity race  I was saddened to learn of the
death of Michael Winner, whose passing formed the subject of
retrospectives throughout the media. I never knew him
personally. I found his films vulgar and second-rate - though
most were box-office successes. I had little enthusiasm for his
claim to be a connoisseur of non-kosher foods and of the
restaurants that served them. There were aspects of his
lifestyle that I found gross and boring in equal measure. But
one aspect of his character struck me as quite endearing He was
not merely an eccentric. His eccentricity was not simply (as
Louise Mensch tweeted) "something splendidly British". It was
something splendidly Anglo-Jewish.  Winner was the latest -
though hopefully not the last - in a line of great Anglo-Jewish
eccentrics. The earliest I can recall was Gerard Hoffnung, born
into a Jewish family in Berlin in 1925, who came to Britain as a
refugee in 1938. Hoffnung was a splendid cartoonist, a
moderately accomplished tuba player, a brilliant