Books of the Year: Politics, History, Culture and Ideas
As Christmas approaches and people have bought their presents here is my review of my books of the year. Perfect for all those post-Christmas and New Year presents, book tokens and people who you forgot about and know you shouldn’t have!
Nearly every book listed below was published in 2024 but there a couple of exceptions published in 2022 and 2023 which I only got around to this year – and which I think are very relevant!
Corrine Fowler, Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Britain, Allen Lane.
Corinne Fowler relocates the histories and memories of Empire back to the UK through a series of walks. This brings out rich and in places hidden histories about places and people some of which are deeply uncomfortable for some of the participants. Fowler walks her walks well and knows first-hand the metaphorical minefields she is navigating having been targeted by the history reactionaries for her work with the National Trust of England on slavery.
Alan Lester (ed.), The Truth about Empire: Real Histories of British Colonialism, Hurst.
This is an important intervention in the ongoing history wars taking on a host of the Empire apologists. In particular it gives special attention and analysis to the work of Nigel Biggar and his book Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning made all the more relevant by Biggar’s elevation to the Lords in Kemi Badenoch’s recent peerages. A thoughtful counterblast to Telegraph/Mail hysteria and disinformation.
British declinism is everywhere today but it is also true that it has been one of the defining characteristics of the UK post-1945. This book addresses the causes of such attitudes and finds a UK struggling to face up to its demons and vested interests, irrespective of who is in office.
The Treasury has been the driving force of UK government for decades and despite this it has escaped forensic examination in public. This is the story of the Treasury, the Chancellors who have headed it and its civil servants, along with a scrutinising of what has become known as Treasury orthodoxy which extends its influence across government.
Andrew Blauner (ed.), On the Couch: Writers Analyse Sigmund Freud, Princeton University Press.
The impact of Freud’s ideas changed Western civilisation, and this thoughtful book tries in one volume to come to terms with that and offer a set of engaged and sometimes critical perspectives. It addresses the therapeutic model (the good and bad), confession, trauma, meditation and even Freud’s dogs.
How did the US end up with Trump? Ganz’s answer is that the answer can be found in the right-wing eco-sphere which emerged in the 1990s post-Reaganism in the likes of Pat Buchanan and Josh Limbaugh. Setting themselves against centrist Clintonism and old boy Republicanism they embraced a world of paranoia, rage and conspiracy theories which fuelled the fire of what was to come.
Bryant’s account starts with the original sin of America’s foundational story: the pretense of equality (or equality for men) alongside the reality of slavery and genocide.
This produced a domestic deceit which has been unable to come to terms with the racism and violence America is based upon. All of which has created a set of emotions ready to be played by demagogues and populists in a story which show no sign of ending in the near-future.
Sheila Rowbotham, Reasons to Rebel: My Memories of the 1980s, Merlin Press.
A treasure of a book filled with hope, humanity and optimism. Rowbotham brings to this book the qualities she has brought to her politics: a constant insightfulness and ecumenical spirit combined with searching to build alliances for change. Pivotal to her politics are these qualities and a belief in a politics of socialist feminism influenced by class and sexual equality. At the book’s conclusion Sheila observes: ‘My yearning is to bring a smile of recognition across the generations, revive submerged visions and strengthen the resolve of those in left movements from below to keep on keeping on.’ An alternative account to the 1980s to the conventional fare.
Tariq Ali, You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980-2024, Verso.
Tariq Ali has been a prominent left-wing campaigner since the end of the 1960s and whatever his inner voices has always exuded a degree of self-certainty, writing at one point in this biography: ‘There have been other versions of this story. This is the only one that bears the seal of total accuracy.’ Despite that this is a non-stop global tour championing the causes of anti-imperialism and national liberation – although one which does not publicly want to address the many shortcomings of the ultra-left. Still more often than not Ali is on the side of the forces of light.
Adam Shatz, The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon, Apollo.
Frantz Fanon died in 1961 at the age of 36 but his writing and thinking is critically relevant today. Central to his work is the idea of decolonisation and addressing not just its legacies but the ongoing practices of power and domination which stem from it. Fanon was a revolutionary voice who believed in the possibility of living in a post-colonial world: a future still relevant today. A superb introduction to Fanon and his ideas.
Colm Toibin, On James Baldwin, Brandeis University Press.
2024 marked the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of James Baldwin. This short book of 147 pages by Irish novelist Colm Toibin is both concise and informative and an excellent and very personal introduction. Toibin locates Baldwin in the context of other great American and radical writers and the wider issues which defined his life: the struggle for respect and equality of black America most notably, as well as the places which shaped his life.
Mark Rowlands, The Happiness of Dogs: Why the Unexamined Life Is Most Worth Living, Granta Books.
Do not be put off by the title of this book as this is not a book just about dogs. Rather it is a set of reflections on what makes dogs happy and content, what we humans can learn from them, and from this ruminates on what happiness and even consciousness is. On the way this book touches on existential and philosophical questions doing it in an accessible way.
Max Boot, Reagan: His Life and Legend, Liveright.
Reagan has been one of the most consequential US Presidents since FDR and one of the most misunderstood, something not aided by the relative scarcity of serious biographies of his life. Boot’s take is a critical one, but he understands the importance of his political life and journey leading to his Presidency. Reagan is a figure who needs to be understood paving the way for the right-wing transformation of the US Republicans ultimately leading to Trump. And as a plus point neo-con Douglas Murray in The Spectator hated it.
Kemi Badenoch, Conservatism in Crisis: Rise of the Bureaucratic Class, Renewal 2030.
This pamphlet formed the intellectual ballast (if that is the right description) of Kemi Badenoch’s campaign for the Tory leadership. The main factors holding Britain back are the vice-like grip of ‘the bureaucratic class’ and their suffocation of ‘the market class’. Hence, the need for deregulation, culture wars and the onslaught on ‘the woke’ in an analysis where inequality and climate change get barely a mention. Do not say you have not been warned!
Tony Blair, On Leadership: Lessons for the 21st Century, Hutchinson Heinemann.
Whatever his many flaws Blair clearly had leadership skills and qualities. Now post-Premiership he wants to tell us all the things he has learned as a leader and how today’s class of politicians should take a masterclass from him. This is a bizarre book which sees political leadership as a form of CEO management with little democratic scrutiny; judged by its contents he seems to have no real self-awareness or insight into his mistakes in office and their consequences. Bizarrely given a favourable review by Nicola Sturgeon in the New Statesman.
CULTURE AND MUSIC
Joe Boyd, And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music, Faber & Faber.
Boyd is a musical legend who was there at some of the great musical points of the last fifty years as an active participant producing the likes of Fairport Convention, John Martyn and Nick Drake. This book goes beyond that and is a history of popular music beyond the West giving a platform to the talents and voices of the Global South. It is a breathtaking overview: challenging Western assumptions with all the usual musical suspects of the 1960s and 1970s having at best a walk-on part (including even the Beatles!). Superb on the likes of Brazilian and Indian music.
Richard King, Travels Over Feeling: Arthur Russell, A Life, Faber & Faber.
The renaissance of Arthur Russell posthumously after his death in 1992 has been nothing short of miraculous. One of the true musical polymaths and pioneers he combined a classical musical training with a love of club and dance music. King’s book not only honours Russell but the lost New York of the 1980s and early 1990s where experimentation and breaking boundaries were the norm before the corporatisation of even alt-culture.
Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair, The McCartney Legacy: Volume 2: 1974-80, Deyst.
For decades post-Beatles McCartney’s reputation was critically rock bottom seen as too eager at people pleasing and such musical abominations as ‘Mull of Kintyre’ and the Frog Chorus. Now with the passing of time Macca’s solo work as well as his experimental side in the Beatles and after is being rightly celebrated. This multi-volume set is the most comprehensive yet speaking to everyone who was around McCartney in the 1970s. Volume One covered 1969-73 up to ‘Band on the Run’ and the second volume takes us to just before the murder of John Lennon.
Christophe Lebold, Leonard Cohen: The Man Who Saw the Angels Fall, Luath Press.
At last Leonard Cohen gets the serious, immersive biography that he deserves from a French based literary academic who knew him in his later years. This portrays the many faces and aspects of Cohen musically, artistically and as a person, and comes as close as anyone can to understanding him and what drove him. An exceptional and important book on a one-off talent. And as a plus published by Edinburgh’s Luath Press.
Michael Marra, A Can of Mind and A Tin of Think So, Assai Records.
At long last over a decade after his death in 2012 Dundee-born Michael Marra has had a fitting tribute. This combines a beautiful book about Marra containing reproductions of his art and other mementos along with short essays from those who knew him (declaration: I have a short essay on meeting Gil Scott-Heron and connecting him and Michael). Available in a limited edition in a music box set containing an album of Michael’s music and all sorts of gorgeous artifacts. Great to see such love and it begs the question: when will Michael’s musical estate get sorted out and his back catalogue rereleased?
Finally a closing word about Jeremy Seabrook (1939-2024) who passed away at the age of 85. Seabrook had a deep humanity and voice, addressed post-imperial and post-industrial challenges in the UK and globally, and did so in a manner always curious and avoiding dogmatism. Never in tenured academia it was no accident that he wrote in a jargon free style to appeal to the widest audience.
His books cover the decline of the labour movement, importance of neighbourhood, global capital’s exploitation chains in the UK and India, and growing up gay in post-war Britain. At the end of What Went Wrong? Working People and he Ideals of the Labour Movement (1978) he quotes Mr Llewellyn, a retired miner:
“It is a sad thing, we have to start from scratch. All over again. What we fought for in the old days has receded so far from us; even the issues have been forgotten. It seems a shame. I thought I would see socialism in my lifetime. It looked like it, even in 1945. We’ve got to start all over again. I shan’t be here to do it but there will be those who will.”
Kind of puts the tribulations of Starmer’s Labour government in context.
“abomination” ?
Get tae f##k.
Mull of Kintyre was one of my granny’s favourite songs.
Given Nicola Sturgeon’s approach to leadership, is it really so ‘bizarre’ that she should give Tony Blair’s book a favourable review?
Treble selfies all round!
100% agree on the Sturgeon-Blair admiration. Bizarre that she made it publicly!
Aye! 🙂
Both of them had unbeatable election records, both were feared by opponents and ended up being loathed by a large number of supporters.
Both had flaws, like virtually all leaders, though NS flaws did not cost thousands of lives.
I could not read the NS review in New Statesman, but found this one in The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/sep/04/on-leadership-by-tony-blair-working-to-rule
Seemed to me like a perfectly reasonable review, setting out the strong points and weaknesses of the book in a readable manner. I’ didn’t find anything particularly bizarre about it at all.
Paddy – I agree with you on this. There is no doubt that NS had faults, which politician doesn’t, but it appears fashionable among those some independence supporters and commentators to now renounce her, everything she did and all who support her. This strikes me as a having a whiff of intellectual snobbery and revisionism that would not have out of placeChinese Communist Party in 1960’s.
I am and never was a NS sycophant but when one considers how the opponents of independence both feared her and targeted her I find this demonisation of her by independence supporters distasteful.
Maybe she gave it a favourable review because she found it was well-[ghost]written.
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
Thanks for the heads-up, Gerry, though I can happily do without Blair on leadership…
For what it’s worth, here are a few books I read this year which I would recommend:
1) “The Myth of the Jacobite Clans” – by Murray Pittock, best summed up in Pittock’s own words:
“The 12,500-14,000 or so men who fought for C.E Stuart, like the 20,000 or more who were out in 1715 were – as it is increasingly agreed – the major military challenge faced by the 18thC British State. They came from throughout Alba, the ancient realm of Scotland north of Forth-Clyde, and in 1715 they came from south of it in numbers too. They did not fight for the right to have Jacobite clubs… to restore the Royal Touch or cast latitudinarian bishops from the bench of the Church of England – they did not even fight to restore the Tories to power. The Jacobites who wanted these things by and large did not fight. In 1745-46, as in 1715-16, the Scottish Jacobites who did fight fought for the Scottish kingdom and its king, for an end to Union and the restoration of Episcopacy. Some were forced; some came out because of old loyalties or new pressures. Not all their motives were patriotic: the mixture of human motives is part of the human condition. But the Jacobites preserved the historiography, values and sometimes the language and manners of the Scottish kingdom, while often being abreast or even in advance of their contemporaries in many of their ideas. Their challenge was a threat to Great Britain itself. Even in defeat, the existence of British history as a narrative of successful state formation depended in large part on the Myth of the Jacobite Clans to alienise, despise and later romanticize their cause…”
2) “The 100 Years’ War on Palestine” – by Rashid Khalidi. Devastating summation of the “five” different wars on Palestine, from the Balfour Declaration of 1917 right up to the Oslo Accords of 1993.
3) “The Dawn of Everything – David Graeber and David Wengrow
A really fantastic read, written by an anthropologist and archaeologist who try to bust the myths surrounding the development of human societies most of which have come from the Enlightenment. Apart from anything else, it’s a great summation of the state of play in archaeology and anthropology with so much fascinating detail about ancient civilizations and tribes. The aim of the book is to undermine the stadial view of history and dismantle some of the absurd premises it rests on, such as that cities are always hierarchical and never egalitarian, and that history only moves in one direction. The basic idea of the stages of civilization and the “seismic” change of agricultural revolution leading to a surplus of grain which then sustained a ruling elite is exposed as a myth. Instead, Wengrow and Graeber argue it all began as “play farming” in delta areas and that sometimes, in some places in the world, farming was started up and then abandoned altogether again. Perhaps the most tantalizing element in the book is the idea that it was the contact between the French colonists in what is Quebec and the Wendat tribes there that led Enlightenment society n France to seriously ask questions about individual freedom and why it didn’t exist in 18th century France and more specifically in the figure of Kondiaronk. Ultimately, the authors are unable to fully account for “how we got stuck” where we are today, but even asking the question is a big step in these times.
4) “The Films In My Life” – François Truffaut
Indispensable insight into Trauffat’s views on film-making. Worth noting: his hatred of “Bridge Over the River Kwai”, his devotion to Jean Renoir, Jean Vigo, Max Ophuls, his initially adverse reaction to John Ford and description of Howard Hawks as “the most underrated of the great Hollywood directors”, his appraisal of Rossellini (he only needs a starting point, not a whole story), his description of Scottish Norman McLaren as “one of the greatest film-makers in the world”, and his observation, astute and of fundamental importance, that while a writer has his characters, a film-maker has his actors who play characters, and for this reason Truffaut prefers movies to books.
5) “The Trial of Patrick Sellar” – Ian Grimble
Excellent summation of the lengthy, slow and ultimately just reaction against the Sutherland Clearances, which starts out with the trial of Patrick Sellar in 1816, in itself, a mere formality designed to allow Sellar to prove his innocence for burning a croft with an old woman still inside who, although she was carried out in time, died just a few days later. The search for justice really begins with David Stewart of Garth and his book in 1821 entitled Sketches of the Character, Manner and Present State of the Highland of Scotland, within which he included an account of the wrongdoing of Sellar and Loch, the Edinburgh trained lawyer and MP, who painted a quite fraudulent portrait of the events of the Clearances, though in effect still gave enough information to damn his own cause. The next phase came with the denunciation of the same events by the Swiss thinker, Sismondi, and Marx too of course. There then followed the account given by the stonemason and eye-witness to the cruel clearing of the land, Donald MacLeod and in particular his rebuttal to Harriet Beecher Stowe (“Uncle Tom’s Cabin”) who wrote of her trip to the Sutherland household, “Gloomy Memories”. Professor John Stuart Blackie then got involved and became an advocate for the Gaels. In 1883, Gladstone set up a royal commission to look into the plight of those left in the Highland, led by Lord Napier. The Commission’s report “was the trumpet which demolished the walls of Jericho that landlordism had thrown around Parliament”… and “In 1886, the Bill was enacted which gave the people of the Highlands and Islands protection in the lands they occupied as statuary tenants. In what little land remained in their hands, the Celtic people of Scotland obtained in 1886 the security that the Indian peasant enjoyed under British rule, that most Scandinavian peasants had always enjoyed, and that had been conceded to the Prussian serf in the 18th century”. Have things improved much since then?
6) Orwell’s Island: George, Jura and 1984 – Les Wilson
The book focuses on Orwell and Scotland, and in particular, his initial, deeply rooted Scottish phobia which was effectively cured by his time on Jura, at Barnhill, which, far from being a jaunt of a few months, was Orwell’s attempt to start a new life dedicated to writing, with the possibility of a nuclear war not being so very far away from his reasons for heading to live there, though others like his love of the spartan lifestyle and outdoor manual work would figure too. By early 1947 he was writing in the Tribune that Scotland “had been plundered shamefully” and that “Scotland is almost an occupied country. You have an English or anglicized upper-class, and a Scottish working class, which speaks with a markedly different accent or, even part of the time, in a different language.” (123) Orwell was from a family from Scotland which had made lots of money in the slave-trade and his headmistress at private school he attended, St Cyprian’s, was of Scottish descent and esteemed the Scots as well as being cruel and sadistic. The Scots, with 10% of the population, received 15% of the compensation paid to slave-owners. This, coupled with his experience of Scottish soldiers in Burma where he was a policeman, made Orwell anti-Scottish. Orwell’s dislike of the Scots was something he often mentioned to people, and he refused to go to a reading by the Muirs because they were Scottish.
7)The Bone Cave – Dougie Strang
Part travelogue, part memoir, part foray into the myths and legends of Highland Scotland, Dougie Strang’s pulls off a complicated balancing act which allows for a fruitful and highly engaging read. Best again to use the author’s own words. “Biodiversity and cultural diversity go hand in hand. It’s no surprise that the flourishing of one encourages the flourishing of the other, or that the opposite is also true, Across the world, and here in Scotland, when indigenous cultures and traditional land practices are supressed, a loss of biodiversity soon follows and the monoculture of consumerism echoes through agro-industry, strip-mining and deforestation. Meanwhile, stories, clinging on, ringing down through the years, remind us how to live in right relationship with place and with the other beings that we share place with.” (223)
8) “And The Judges Said”… Essays – James Kelman.
Playful, egalitarian and at times, brilliant James Kelman, with the majority of these essays being speeches made at meetings to defend writers of colour exiled in Scotland or elsewhere. A Reading From the Work of Noam Chomsky and the Scottish Tradition in the Philosophy of Common Sense is a wonderful essay: “I cannot conceive of someone reading Chomsky’s work honestly and failing to be moved by it. The basic principle of humankind is freedom, the right not to be tortured, the right not to be raped, the right not to be violated, the right not to be colonized in any way whatsoever. It is an inalienable right; whether it is deduced or whether it had to be discovered in any other manner is not of great significance. And such questions can only be of ultimate interest to those whose ideological position is served by obscuring the issue. Either we do battle on behalf of the basic principle or we do not. This seems to me to be Chomsky’s position. It is not a new one, but it remains as dangerous as ever.”
9)Scotland After Enlightenment – Craig Beveridge & Ronnie Turnbull
Another brilliant book by B&T, an excellent summation and critique of what we might call generally post-war Scottish history and cultural studies. The book criticizes historians like TC Smout for painting such a bleak picture in his histories of Scotland, over emphasising those elements which ‘present’ such as Cyldesideism, Orangeisim, the city, and ignoring rural Scotland, though William Fergusson and even Tom Nairn come in for some flak. The traditionalist depiction of Glasgow comes in especially for sustained attack, and as the authors point out, far from being a backwater: “Mackintosh emerged from a cultural milieu which was generally responsive to avant garde as well as traditional or classical tastes. In the 1870s and 1880s, Glasgow citizens appreciated and patronised the most contemporary European art…if all was philistine about the Glasgow middle class, it is difficult to explain the fact that his greatest work, the Glasgow School of Art, was made possible because the Governors decided that new premises were required; launched an appeal in 1895; and by February 1896 had accrued sufficient capital to begin to build” (37) Sum up the MacArthur / Nairn philosophy thus: “The main argument put forward by such contributions was that Scots have connived at the manufacture and peddling of clownish, contorted visions of their history and culture for reasons of economic gain and British-imperial participation, and as a way of evading the harsh realities of the Scottish condition.” (58) Some of the factual errors of this view – that the 45 was a Highland phenomenon – have already been quashed by people like Murray Pittock. But just as equally when considering the “backward” nature of Jacobitism is the reality that 1688 was not progressive, modernizing or liberal in any meaningful sense. “The deposition of the Stuarts inaugurated, not as rosy Whig and popular versions of history would have it, a movement towards democracy, but rather the establishment of a permanent, patrician oligarchy.” (69) And they go on to say: “We might summarise the characteristics of the positive, libertarian ‘post-Jacobite’ ideology which developed from the 18th C through the central figure of James Hogg, to the work of cultural nationalists of the 20th C in the following terms. It is founded on a conception of Scottish history as a struggle for freedom and for the liberty of the oppressed, a fight viewed in long historical perspective, with Wallace and Bruce invoked as actors in the drama. The Jacobite propaganda image of the Highlander as loyal patriot… was extended to cover, by association, the industrial-urban Scots of the 19th and 20th centuries. In this conception, the ’45 was not the end, as Scott desperately wrote it up to be, this was not Scotland’s destiny, and the risings would continue in the form the new ages would give them.” (71) And conclude by criticizing Lenman’s description of Scotland as being “deferential” and loyal to London. “It seems odd that a country which has for decades been subjected to terror and repression, and then finally battered into submission, and which military roads, new forts, and occupation forces everywhere, should be described as deferential. A different perspective on Scottish history would emphasise the rebelliousness of a ‘province’ which became the focus of a remarkable series of attempts to overthrow the Hanoverian state.”
10) The Dalkey Archive – Flann O’Brien.
A hilarious and very short novel by one of the greats. When it is not straight laugh-out-loud, then it always produces a smile. The story is about Mick, an Irish civil servant, and how he meets on Dalkey beach, a scientist and inventor called De Selby. De Selby takes Mick and his pal Hackett back to his house and gives them some special whisky before telling them of his invention of a special substance which will remove all of the oxygen from the air and put an end to the failed project of humankind. To prove his special powers, De Selby takes Mick and Hackett on an adventure under the sea at Dalkey and through somehow to an underwater cavern where he summons and then interrogates the spirit of Saint Agustus. Following this Mick decides he must thwart De Selby’s plans to end the human race and, together with the local policeman, and the decoy of Hackett, they break into De Selby’s house and remove the magic substance. At the same time, Mick has heard in his local boozer that James Joyce isn’t actually dead but alive and well and working in a pub in a small town just outside Dublin. Mick tracks him down and helps Joyce become a Jesuit priest….
Great picks Douglas thanks
There are some great and thoughtful picks in your selection Douglas.
Beveridge and Turnbull’s work has been hugely influential on my thinking and is due a reappraisal.
The Eclipse of Scottish Culture was a watershed book.
It was reviewed in Bella two years ago; link below; but I think this book need a wider reassessment.
https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2022/11/21/the-parrots-progress-scottish-self-determination-inferiorisation-and-the-limits-of-exceptionalism/
Cheers Gerry and Mike…
Intrigued by Colm Toibin’s book on Baldwin. I am a big fan of Colm, he’s a great guy, among other things he is a hispanophile like me, and his grandad had IRA rifles hidden under the floorboards during the war of independence… that’s a good sign!!!
He ticks all the boxes for me, he’s just a sound guy, and of course a terrific writer who you get the feeling just really worked really hard to be that good.
As for “The Eclipse of Scottish Culture”, it’s a landmark book, but it’s a thesis book in which Scotland is a colony. It’s full of great stuff, but I think I cant quite buy into the main thesis. “After Enlightenment” doesnt burden itself with proving a thesis and is all the better for it…
Cheers.
My top 5 books of 2024
1. Lindsay Stonebridge’s We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience (Jonathan Cape)
Lindsay has approached Arendt in a slightly different way from a straightforward birth-to-death-and-beyond biography. She has combined the events and places in Arendt’s life with thematic questions. She has chapter titles like: ‘How to think like a refugee,’ ‘How to love,’ ‘How not to think about race’, ‘How to change the world,’ ‘Who am I to judge?’, ‘What is freedom?’.
But the events of Arendt’s life are important too; you can’t really understand Hannah Arendt without tying her into the times she lived through, the places she lived, and the people she interacted with. She wrote about totalitarianism as someone who’d experienced it. She emphasised the importance of freedom and resisting dominant ways of thinking, having lived through the rise of Nazi Germany and survived exile in Paris. And she later experienced a certain degree of alienation as an immigrant in America.
As a writer, Arendt responded to her times. As a philosopher, she was very keen that philosophy should respond to the present. This is something that Simone de Beauvoir also said of herself as a writer and philosopher. This was because the concept of a ‘philosopher’ that both were working with was of someone who builds a grand-scale metaphysical system, an Immanuel Kant or a Karl Marx or a Martin Heidegger or a Jean-Paul Sartre. Both Arendt and Beauvoir, on the other hand, were non-systematic problem-thinkers rather than a system-builders.
Lindsay finds very elegant ways through Arendt’s work, teaching us to read Arendt not just as an historical phenomenon of the 20th century, but also as someone who’s equally relevant today. Lindsay’s personal take on Arendt is gleaned through her interactions with Arendt’s places, the places Arendt visited or in which she lived or worked. The relationship Lindsay builds with her subject is a personal one. Arendt would have approved.
We Are Free to Change the World also doesn’t presume the reader will know everything about 20th century history. When she introduces Arendt’s ideas, Lindsay explains the context as she goes. You don’t have to be an historian to understand her references to, for example, the revolution in Portugal or the assassination of Adolf Eichmann by the Israeli state.
We Are Free to Change the World is very accessible as well as being informed by deep scholarship.
2. Edith Hall’s Facing Down the Furies: Suicide, the Ancient Greeks, and Me (Yale University Press)
Like Proust, Nabokov, and Banville, Edith philosophises from the text of her own personal experience, and this dialectical excursion is a very personal one, arising from her own family history of suicide and her own suicidal ideation.
The big theme of the book is how much better the ancient Greeks were at discussing the impact of suicide than our contemporary commentators. She quotes from Sophocles’s Oedipus The Tyrant: ‘The tragedies that hurt the most are those that sufferers have chosen themselves.’
Edith’s very clear that the liberal account of suicide, whereby it’s an individual’s decision and nobody else’s business, just isn’t accurate. When a suicide takes place, even people who don’t know that person very well can be deeply affected. Classical writers understood and explored this forensically in their work.
Like all Edith’s books, this is an extremely easy read. It oscillates between dark personal memoir and illuminating discussions of passages from ancient Greek tragedy. As does Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus, Facing Down the Furies grapples with deep questions about life and death. And like The Myth of Sisyphus, it’s richly embedded in real life.
And for that, as well as for its passion and honesty, it’s all the more authentic than the many more abstract philosophical discussions about the ethics of suicide.
3. Jonathan Birch’s The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI (Oxford University Press)
This is available free online as an open-access PDF
https://academic.oup.com/book/57949?login=false
Jonathan’s a researcher at the London School of Economics. He particularly advocates that we ought to base our interactions with animals on scientific studies of what animals are actually like rather than on our our emotional needs in relation to them. He works with zoologists, ethologists, and others who look very closely at animal behaviour.
Jonathan’s interested in a very wide range of species, especially those that don’t have cute faces. We don’t tend to attribute the same sensitivity and capacity to feel pain to an insect than we can do anthropomorphically to a sweet little puppy or a baby chimp.
Take lobsters, for example. They’re killed in quite gruesome ways for culinary purposes. Research that Jonathan’s been involved in suggests that lobsters have quite sophisticated neural networks and seem to exhibit pain-like behaviour in certain situations. There’s sufficient evidence, Jonathan believes, to here exercise what he calls ‘the precautionary principle’, that we should assume they feel pain just in case they do.
For him, this ‘precautionary principle’ ought to be the driving force in how we treat other animals. If they appear to have the capacity to feel pain, and there’s scientific evidence to back up that appearance, then we should be more careful of them than we’ve been accustomed to being.
Jonathan’s also a superbly clear writer and takes great care in adjusting his belief to the ever-changing evidence. He’s not a sentimental animal lover; he’s a rationalist who bases everything he writes on the available science and sound reasoning from the best data we have.
He’s also adept at disseminating his arguments. He appears frequently on podcasts, radio, and television, albeit in interviews on the potential sentience of AI than of animals.
By making his book freely available online, he’s guaranteed the book a wider readership.
4. Jaime Edwards and Brian Leiter’s Marx (Routledge).
The term ‘Marxist’ is thrown about a lot, often quite loosely. Some people come to Marx through economics and Capital. Others come to him through politics and The Communist Manifesto. Others still come through the ideas about alienation or ideology they find in the Grundrisse and the earlier Paris Manuscripts. This book offers a clear and comprehensive overview of Marx’s life and the ideas that underpin all of his economics, politics, anthropology, and cultural criticism.
I particularly enjoyed the chapter on ideology. Ideology (and culture in general) is the way in which the so-called ‘establishment’, the whole matrix of relations through which power is exercised in a society, conditions all aspects of our lives without us realising it and privileges in those lives the interests of the ruling class. ‘Decolonisation’ is any of the processes by which we can liberate ourselves from the ‘establishment’; that is, from the economic, political, and cultural hegemonies the ruling class exercises over our minds and bodies.
Jaime and Brian don’t shy away from spelling out what the mainstream interpretations of Marx’s writings and engaging critically with those interpretations. They benefit from the huge secondary literature on Marx, but don’t get bogged down in it. Sometimes, in just a sentence or two, the authors illuminate things even I’ve never fully understood before, and I’ve been studying Marx for over 70 years.
This isn’t the last word on Marx by a long chalk. No doubt, various Marxists will find fault with some aspects of it as read through the prism of their own ideological interests. But it’s certainly an extremely useful book for anybody interested in understanding Marx. It’s written by philosophers who can write as well as think critically about what they’re writing about. It’s not an inert summary, but writing that brings Marxist arguments alive and shows their strengths and limitations.
5. Emily Herring’s Herald of a Restless World: How Henri Bergson Brought Philosophy to the People (Basic Books)
Bergson isn’t as well known in the UK as he is in France. Emily gives some possible explanations for that. One is that Bertrand Russell absolutely hated Bergson because Bergson eclipsed Russell as a popular speaker. Bergson’s reputed to have been responsible for the first recorded traffic jam (in Broadway in New York) when he spoke there. People used to hang onto the windowsills of the halls where he lectured, ears pressed against the glass, trying to hear what he was saying. Russell, the godfather of 20th century British philosophy, couldn’t match his popular appeal and was ruthless when it came using his academic influence to marginalise the competition.
One of Bergson’s greatest hits was his notion of ‘durée’, sometimes translated as ‘duration’, but which more or less equates to ‘lived’ or ‘felt’ time. Bergson pointed out that our subjective experience of time is very different from capitalist ‘clock’ time, which is divided into units of equal length and strictly measured like any other commodity, and he urged that ‘lived’ time is the more authentic of the two.
Bergson held that, under capitalism, we neglect the most important thing about time, that it’s something we live within rather than measure. His notion of ‘durée’ was a plea for the subjective experience of time in an age of obsessive objective measurement and quantification. The best man at his wedding was Marcel Proust, whose À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) is a fine poetic expression of Bergson’s critique of capitalist time.
Emily’s a reliable source. Her PhD was on Bergson. But what I love most about the book is she’s a great writer. She has a light touch with language and finds ways of telling stories and relating ideas and thinkers and events that are completely compelling.
Herald of a Restless World has been widely reviewed and universally praised. It’s by all accounts a dazzling debut. The Irish novelist, John Banville, ‘the heir to Proust via Nabokov’, selected it for the New Statesman as one of his books of the year as well.
Thank you for mentioning Jeremy Seabrook. As a reader in cities, I have so many of his books on poverty in cities: I am reading “In The Cities of The South” (Verso), where Seabrook explores and meets many ordinary people working in the ‘new cities’ made by free market neoliberalism in South and South East Asia, in cities such as Jakarta, Bangkok, Dhaka, Mumbai and Delhi. One of my favourites is his short book from the New Internationalist series (also by Verso) the “No-Nonsense Guide to World Poverty”, with so many real life people telling their stories.
He will be much missed.
The book I am most enjoying at the moment is Stuart Ward’s “Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain” (Cambridge UP). It is a must read for anyone interested in the history of the slow ‘break-up of Britain’, from 1945 to the present. Ward charts that ‘Britishness’ was a concept that could be argued at times to be stronger in 1950s NZ and Australia (Menzies) than Britain itself (during Wilson and the swinging 60s), and has fascinating chapters on Smuts in South Africa; Rhodesia and Ian Smith; the ‘overseas British’ in Falklands, Gibralter and Northern Ireland (Ward convincingly argues that NI protestant unionists have more in common with Falklands islanders and Gibraltar than ‘mainlanders’); a whole chapter on Gywnfor Evans and Winnie Ewing PC and SNP’s first wins in the 1960s – the first sparks lighting the flame of the Welsh and Scottish independence movements (I didn’t know anything about the Welsh nationalist campaign of disruption in 1969, which was fascinating). The last chapter is a conclusion stating that: (Ward an Australian academic based in Denmark – which is a very qualified perspective as an outsider looking in) “if Australia qualifies as a nation ‘endlessly coming of age’, there is sense in which Britain since the 1970s has become a country endlessly coming to an end – apparently with no end in sight” (p488). Such an excellent line!
Great writing, researching and a must read!
Many thanks for the recommendations and reviews.
Lots to mull over.
Totally agree about Stuart Ward, Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain: a superbly written book and thesis and placing the multiple crises of the UK in their global context.
Similarly, Lindsay Stonebridge’s We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience.
And two additions of mine would be: Ann Powers, Travelling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell, which I think is one of the best attempts to navigate and try to understand Joni.
And: Melinda Cooper, Counter-Revolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance is a brilliant critique of the changing nature of capitalism and the appeasement of the political classes while illustrating that there is still organised resistance even in the heart of the developed world.
Many thanks Douglas for the words on Jeremy Seabrook. All my adult life his work, insights and inspiration has just been there to draw from. The breadth of his writing and humanity over 60 years is truly unique.
What about the novel, ladies and gents?
Has the novel lost its place in the contemporary debate? I still think the novel is the best place to go if you want to get a feel for a society.
I read “Hard Times” this summer, the only Dickens novel which F.R Leavis included in his canonical (and by now, largely discredited) “The Great Tradition”. It’s a good novel though Dickens for me is rarely great, rather, he is consistently good over so many books, which makes him a great writer (though not one of the very best, at least not for me). What is striking about it is how contemporary it still feels, being all about the brutal capitalist exploitation of the fictional Coketown with its smog and its factories and ill-treated “hands”.
It’s a “condition of England” novel, that is to say, it forms part of the culture and society debate which Raymond Williams summarises and explores in his famous book of the same name.
That debate was largely fashioned by Scots or men of Scottish ancestory: Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, Ruskin…(though also Coleridge, Burke and Matthew Arnold). All of them were bitterly critical of free-market lassiez-fare capitalism which they all agreed, whether from left or right, was degrading to the human being – culture would offset its brutalizing effects for John Stuart Mill for example…
In terms of Brexit, one of the things that stands out from Williams’ book is the line about the English traditional working class consistently wanting more, not less, government over the centuries. It made me think that Brexit is something a continuation of that tradition…
Of course, Andrew O’Hagan has written a “state of the nation” novel in “Caledonian Road”, but I haven’t looked at it yet.
As for Hannah Arendt, I think she is one of the greats of the 20th century. I have only read “The Origins of Totalitarianism” but thought it a brilliant account of the horrors of the 20th century. Interesting how she locates the origins of the Holocaust in European colonialism and imperialism…
My top 10 ‘political’ novels of 2024 would be (in no particular order):
Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo: Follows two brothers in the aftermath of their father’s death and explores themes of grief, intergenerational relationships, sibling dynamics, and the power inequalities that structure our lives. Rooney’s most mature and philosophically ambitious work yet.
Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time: A funny, moving, original, intelligent, beautifully written, screwball comedy that also provides keen analyses on the nature of colonialism, power, and bureaucracy.
Rita Bullwinkel’s Headshot: The story of eight teenage female boxers, told over the two days of a tournament. What emerges from the drama is a portrait of the desire, envy, perfectionism, and madness of physical competition and the radical intimacy of violence.
Yasmin Zaher’s The Coin: Follows a Palestinian woman as she pursues the dream of living and thriving in America. Enthralling, sensory, and uncanny, the novel explores materialism, nature and civilisation, class, homelessness, sexuality, beauty, and how oppression and inherited trauma manifest in every area of our lives, without descending into the maudlin moralising of victimisation.
Tommy Orange’s Wandering Stars: The tender, harrowing story of several generations of a family that’s searching for ways through the displacement and pain of colonisation towards home and hope. A wondrous novel of poetry, music, rage, and love.
Rachel Cusk’s Parade: A trailblazing experimental novel of art, womanhood, and violence, and a freewheeling examination of creation, gender, and art. Her fluent grafting of fiction to autobiography makes you wonder why more novels aren’t written this way.
Taffy Brodesser-Akner: Long Island Compromise: A darkly exhilarating novel about a bourgeois family and its inheritance, the safety and wealth it’s fought for, and the precarity of its legacy to the next generation, raising timeless questions about wealth, crisis, and the capitalist soul.
Andrew O’Hagan’s Caledonian Road: A sprawling, social novel, in which the main character fractures in front of our very eyes. External factors trigger a slow internal collapse that’s excruciating to watch. The big moral takeaway, however, is that ‘It’s immoral to delude yourself that you’re doing good, when all you’re doing is virtue-signalling and making yourself feel good.’
Miranda July’s All Fours: Explores dance, desire, mortality, and transcendence on the wild autofictional journey of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part reinvention of the sexual and domestic life of a 45-year-old female artist, All Fours excavates our beliefs about life lived as a woman with wry humour, perfect comic timing, and unabashed curiosity about human intimacy.
Jo Hamya’s The Hypocrite: Poses complex questions about art and ethics, family life, and our contemporary sexual customs and conventions, while dodging the cursed conceit of ‘being right’ that damns the vast majority of us. The Hypocrite explores big ideas about gender roles, generation gaps, and the nature of genius through its precise observations and characterisations, and offers forensic and pitiless insights into our entitled culture, in which everyone believes they’re in the right.
Many thanks for these great suggestions.
Am going to look up several of these as I have not heard of them & they sound fascinating.
Thank you again. And as a wee thought if anyone fancies reviewing their best fiction books for 2025 let us know.
Thanks for Mr Date Man for those novel recommendations. But no foreign fiction there…
My Spanish language books of the year:
1) Enrique Vila-Matas, “Dublinesque” and “Never Any End To Paris”. Enrique is the coolest post-modern fiction writer in the world today. No question. An absolute legend, and one of the best read novelists in the world today. (“search for the depths where irony can’t reach” as Rilke said). Enrique, opens new paths for the novel… He is a one -off and an ouright addiction.
2) Rafael Chibres: “The Long March” and “The Fall of Madrid.” Rafael Chibres burst onto the literary scene in Spain after the whole arse fell out of the Spanish economy in 2008-2012. A man who had been denouncing Spain’s Tranistion to democracy for 30 years, at the very end of his life, suddenly became flavour of the month. He was right all along – it was a stitch up by the Spanish elite. When I opened “The Long March” and read the heading of the First Part of the book, “The Army of the Ebro” I almost wept. Literally. Here was a man who told the ordinary stories of the losers of the Spanish Civil War in the years after that defeat. Poignant. Heart-breaking. But never sentimental. Best known for “Crematorium”. A terrific writer of the ordinary lives of ordinary Spaniards.
3) Burying The Dead: Ignacio Martínez Pisón. Ignacio is a solid, decent writer who examines the heart-breaking case of Jose Robles, the translator of John Dos Passos, who was disappeared by Stalin’s agents in Valencia en 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. Robles was not just the translator of Dos Passos, he was also his lifelong friend. He was murdered by Stalinist agents and his body was never found. The disappearance of Robles led to the break up between Dos Passos and Hemingway, who made light of his death. Dos Passos never forgave Hemingway, or Spain, and, turning his back on the Left, ended up voting for Nixon in the 60s. His whole belief in progressive politics and literature was totally shattered by the Robles case, and he could never write the same again. A tragic 20th century story.
4) The General In His Labyrinth by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Gabo, Gabo, Gabo, No one still today in Spanish letters writes such mesmerizing prose as Gabriel García Marquez. The novel recounts the last days of Simón de Bolivár, “the liberator” as he makes his way into exile down the river Magdalena from Bogotá before dying. The title of the novel comes from the last recorded words he spoke on his death bed: “¿Y como voy a salir yo de este laberinto? / and how am I going to get out of this labyirinth”. Just superb… absolutely superb….
I don’t read Spanish, only French and German.
My favourite German novel of 2024 was Hey guten morgen, wie geht es dir? by Martina Hefter, a novel about a performance artist in her mid-50s who cares for her husband, who has multiple sclerosis. During her sleepless nights, she chats with a Nigerian love scammer, and the novel explores the lines between virtual and tangible relationships.
My favourite French novel was Changer: méthode by Édouard Louis, an autobiographical novel, exploring themes of class division and identity formation in rural France.
I’m about 120 pages in to Caledonian Road, and am wondering which nation it is the state of.
O’Hagan’s Caledonian Road is in the London Borough of Islington. It’s named after the Royal Caledonian Asylum.
I know that. I’m referring to the fact that the Sunday Times describes it as a “state of the nation” book, and I’m wondering (well, not really) which nation it is they’re talking about.
Thanks for all your enlightened comments folks on this thread.
Happy New Year to everyone!
And if anyone fancies taking a stab at their best fiction for this year towards the latter half of the calendar let us know!
Drop me or Bella a line ….
‘3) Burying The Dead: Ignacio Martínez Pisón….’
Reading the above reference, I was immediately struck by the impression that I had already read the ‘same’ book; but by a different, US, author.
Rummaging in my memory and supplemented it via the information super-highway, I settled upon the book:
“The Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of Jose Robles by Stephen Koch” which I did read about a decade ago and greatly enjoyed.
Further investigation led me to the following about the nature and the timing of both books:
“Although it has been said that Martínez de Pisón’s ‘Enterrar a los muertos’ may have been inspired by Stephen Koch’s The Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Passos and the Murder of José Robles, [the] fact is that the former was published in February 2005, a couple of months earlier than Stephen Koch’s book in the United States; both books deal with the same events but in quite a different tone and from different perspectives—Koch’s book reads like historical fiction and focuses on the idea of Hemingway’s political falseness. However, both have successfully contributed to the revisiting of John Dos Passos.
Martínez de Pisón’s book has generally been positively reviewed, although one particular aspect, his portrayal of poet Rafael Alberti, raised some criticism by writer and journalist Benjamín Prado;…”
The above quote is from an article, readily available online in pdf format entitled: ‘The making of a Spanish Dos Passos’ by Spanish academic Rosa María Bautista-Cordero which struck me as a very informative introduction to the issues at hand.
Finally, I searched the reader opinions in the US site for Amazon and found a wide variety of well argued reviews offering widely divergent interpretations of the value of the US book. The negative evaluations included comments to the efect that Koch was willing to invent dialogue for real-life characters in his book which he cannot under any circumstances have sourced. Thinking back, I believe that I did notice this tendency at the time.
He is also accused of character assasination on both Hemingway and his then love-interest Martha Gelhorn; an ironic accusation given that a real-life political murder lies at the centre of this tale.
To finish, on the topic of the Second Republic and the Spanish Civil War, I personally have reached the conclusion that, whilst the baddies are amazingly easy to identify, the goodies are more elusive. Much more elusive, in fact… with the story of Alberti, alluded to above, as a (quite massively trivial, in the context) example of this problem.
Thanks for this, James Scott and Happy New Year to you and all at Bella.
Yes, I actually read the Koch book too this year (“The Breaking Point”), and did not rate it and its sensationalist tone very much at all, but it jogged my memory enough to get me onto Martínez Pisón’s book which I had heard of and is much better. It is highly critical of a previous Koch book on the same subject which “The Breaking Point” is possibly an expanded or revised version of, I can’t be sure.
Koch’s book, as the title suggests, is very much about the relationship between Hemingway and Dos Passos, with Robles himself being no more than the denonator of their fall out, whereas “Burying the Dead” is much more centred on the Robles-Dos Passos story itself, and how they met on a train in 1917 while Dos was on a trip to Spain and became the best of friends and colleagues.
The Koch book is also weak on the history of the Spanish Civil War and the nuances between the various groups with the Republican side in the war and Koch doesn’t read Spanish which seriously limits his understanding of it . According to Martinez de Pisón, it is factually wrong on when and how Dos Passos found out about Robles’ murder, ie, not from Hemingway at the party in honour of the XV International Brigade in Gaudalajara as Koch says, but from the head of security in Madrid, Quintanilla, the brother of the painter – though that the said party was where their never to be reconciled falling out took place is agreed by both writers…
More greviously still, Koch is also wrong about the journalist Jospehine Herbst (“The Starched Blue Sky of Spain”) being on Stalin’s payroll, as Martinez Pisón proves beyond any doubt she was not. The Martinez Pisón is the one to read, translated into English by Anne MacLean I believe…
As for the poet Rafael Alberti and his wife Maria Teresa Leon, they often come out of accounts of the Civil War looking pretty bad it has to be said… of course, Alberti famously abanonded civilian clothes just after the war broke out and started wearing the blue overalls of the communists and was accused by some (possibly Péman or maybe Cela) of having denounced other writers… Though it’s not something I have looked onto properly so I can’t say…
PS: The most chilling part of the story is when Dos Passos, on his way out of Spain just days before the events of May 1937 kick off, goes to see André Nin, the head of the POUM, in Barcelona – a risky venture – to warn him that Stalin and his thugs are out to get him.
Nin more or less laughs him off, he thinks he is safe in his home town. Of course, just a week or so later Nin was abducted by Orlov’s men, driven to Acala de Henares just outside Madrid, the birthplace of Cervantes, tortured for days on end, before being bludgeoned to death and buried in an unmarked grave at the side of the road…
Sorry, correction, it wasn’t Dos Passos who went to see Nin, it was Liston Oakes, the American volunteer, whose story becomes entangled with that of Dos Passos because he has heard Dos is in Barcelona and turns up at his hotel room in the middle of the night and begs Dos to allow him to leave Spain with him, which he did… Like Robles, he worked with sensitive information and knew that the Events of May 37 were coming….
Oakes gets plenty of mentions in the US book, I seem to remember.
Wiki tells me that around the time of the May Events in Barcelona in 1937, which led directly to the arrest and murder of Nin, Oakes persuaded Dos Passos to pretend that he, Oakes, was his personal assistant and so both were able to escape safely from Spain at around the same time as Orwell and his wife fled for their lives.
The same source tells me that, like Orwell, Oakes became a confirmed anti-communist around then, with Oakes spefically ridiculing the claims that the POUM was a Francoist front.
In that respect they both mirrored the path of a middle class Scottish communist called Hamish Fraser who certainly took longer to convert to that cause but whose conversion was perhaps still more total than in the other 2 cases.
Fraser served in Spain in both the International Brigades and in the infamous ‘Servicio de Informacion Militar’ [SIM]. On returning home, to work in John Brown Engine and Boiler Works Clydebank, Fraser was both sufficiently committed and sufficiently trusted by the CPGB leadership to be given the job of writing the official pamphlet, titled The Intelligent Socialist’s Guide to World War II, justifying the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which was signed less than 6 months after the end of the Spanish War.
By the end of the war, however, he had quit the party and eventually converted to Catholicism a few years later. His rejection of the role of the Spanish Communists in the Civil War was total.
Reflecting on these events and these testimonies only serves to highlight, for me, the wisdom of the decision by the Zionist Government to exclude foreign reporters from Gaza whilst the IDF goes about its quite unpleasant task of ‘necessary multiple-murder’ to secure the wellbeing of the State of Israel.
I didn’t know about Fraser, thank you for that, though I did know about Bob Smilie of course, who quite possibly was killed by the Stalinists in a prison in Valecnia, and in any case died there in murky circumstances…
He was in the POUM, or better said, attached to the POUM, as was Orwell, who was pretty lucky to get out of Spain alive in the end…
Of course, in Scotland, the view of the Spanish Civil War is very much coloured by the heroic men from these shores who joined the International Brigades and went to defend democracy and fight Fascism. They were years ahead of their time and it is unfair to belittle their bravery, doubt their motives, or undermine their legacy…
But the fact remains that the Soviets, that is, Stalin’s agents, practically had a free hand in Republican Spain once the war started, if only from necessity – only Mexico and the USSR would sell arms to Spain – and the actions of Orlov and Gorev have done enough to cast doubt for some historians (Beevor for example) on the democratic credentials of the Republic which might have survived the war had Franco been defeated…