Abstract

‘Andy Croft’s amalgam of essays on some of the dimensions of culture pursued and generated by British communists during give decades of this century, from the twenties through to the sixties, makes compulsive reading ... a lively and provocative collection.’ Tribune

For over seventy years, the Communist Party of Great Britain had an extraordinary impact on British cultural life, exercising an influence quite out of proportion to its size or political importance. Many art forms were revitalised, others profoundly changed, new ones established or shaped by groups and individuals associated with the party, who brought to the realm of cultural production – whether in music, film, theatre or literature – a dynamism and vision that helped to lay the foundations for a new radical culture, a progressive avant garde in which the struggle was always to produce a culture for and of the people, in the front line of the battle of ideas.

The distinguished contributors to this volume – the first serious study of the subject – draw on new research to recover the fascinating histories of the artists, poets, musicians, film-makers and cultural visionaries of the period, placing them in a broader historical context and providing an invaluable introduction to British social and cultural history in the twentieth century.