Actress Maureen Lipman has no intention of leaving Britain despite fears of rising anti-semitism

British actress Maureen Lipman has dispelled any suggestion that she is about to leave Britain due to what has been described as a rising tide of anti-semitism.

In January, in the wake of a series of attacks on Jewish targets in Europe - and because of what she saw as a growing anti-Israel trend in the British media - Lipman said: "When the going gets tough, the Jews get packing ... it's crossed my mind that it's time to have a look around for another place to live. I've thought about going to New York, I've thought about going to Israel."

She described a 36% rise in the total number of anti-semitic incidents in Britain, including violent crime and vandalism, to 304 between January and June 2014 as "very, very depressing".

Lipman added that her children and friends have become anxious, too. She said: "There are 245,000 Jews in this country; I've been talking like this for a long time, and my kids are very bored with me. But it is only in the last few months that they have to begun to say: 'Mum you may have something'."

However, in an interview with the Jewish Chronicle to mark her appearance in the stage version of Harvey, Lipman refers to the January interview, on LBC radio: "[The presenter] said, 'Would you go?' and I said, 'If things got tough, of course I'd go.' The next thing I read is Lipman is leaving. I've had letters saying 'Don't go.' But it's not as if I was saying I can't wait to get out of this country."

But now she says there are no plans to leave, and not much urge to do so either, she told the JC, because the very idea upset her children Adam and Amy, now the family playwright since her husband, Jack [Rosenthal], died, in 2004.