Latest editorial
MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Studious rebel
Intriguing account of Lenin's time in London
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
The Spark that Lit the Revolution: Lenin in London and the Politics that Changed the World
By Robert Henderson
IB Tauris, £25
Lenin warned against turning leaders into icons after their deaths. Unlike most of the biographies of a man whose ideas increasingly resound amid the world’s accumulating crises, Robert Henderson’s archival snapshots put human flesh on the intellectual and political bones of a figure who remains either revered or hated to this day.
Seeking a base to edit and publish Iskra (the spark), the official paper of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), safe from the Okhrana, the tsarist secret police, Lenin made a number of fleeting visits to London in the first decade of the 20th century.
More from this author
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
GORDON PARSONS is disappointed by an unsubtle production of this comedy of upper middle class infidelity
GORDON PARSONS joins a standing ovation for a brilliant production that fuses Shakespeare’s tragedy with Radiohead's music
GORDON PARSONS recommends a gripping account of flawed justice in the case of Pinochet and the Nazi fugitive Walther Rauff
