The novel became an instant best-seller. But the Jewish Chronicle said there were "several things we could have wished Mr Zangwill had left untouched". Zangwill pulled no punches in his critique of wealthy Jews who were more interested in assimilating into English culture than in preserving their own.

After meeting Theodor Herzl in 1896 Zangwill became a leading Zionist. But he came to argue forcibly that Palestine would be the wrong place for a Jewish state - on the simple grounds that it was already occupied by Arabs. He founded the Jewish Territorial Association which investigated such places as Angola and Libya as sites for a homeland. His political involvement also took in campaigning for women's suffrage and a pacifist stand against the First World War. But all the time he continued writing stories and plays - the best known being The Melting Pot, a huge hit in the US in 1909. Zangwill died an exhausted man in 1926, claiming that he'd 'wasted his life' on Zionism.

This programme tours the East End for signs of the former Jewish ghetto, and interviews both historians and literary scholars about Zangwill's significance.