ANDY HEDGECOCK is entertained by a playful novel that embeds a fictional game at its heart
THIS fascinating study of Clement Attlee and Winston Churchill focuses on how their lives became intertwined almost from the very beginning, leading to a great linkage during the second world war and separate, but still in many ways parallel, lives thereafter.
Author Leo McKinstry has certainly done his homework in discovering those parallels. In 1911, Churchill had one of his periodic rushes of blood to the head when, as Home Secretary, he personally supervised the “Siege of Sydney Street” in east London.
At the same time Attlee, working at a charitable organisation where his experiences saw him move from his early conservatism to socialism, wandered by as the Sydney Street drama reached its climax, a gunfight between two Latvian revolutionaries and the police and army.
Barred from returning home, a group of Greek Brigaders came to Britain and founded the League for Democracy in Greece – a movement that carried the flame of anti-fascist resistance from the 1930s through the cold war and beyond. ALI BASSAM ZAHID tells the story
It’s not just the Starmer regime: the workers of Britain have always faced legal affronts on their right to assemble and dissent, and the Labour Party especially has meddled with our freedoms from its earliest days, writes KEITH FLETT
TONY FOX invites readers to come and hear the story of the remarkable Liverpudlian International Brigader Alexander Foote
The summer of 1950 saw Labour abandon further nationalisation while escalating Korean War spending from £2.3m to £4.7m, as the government meekly accepted capitalism’s licence and became Washington’s yes-man, writes JOHN ELLISON



