Comrade Heart: A Life of Randall Swingler

Tells the extraordinary story of the English poet Randall Swingler, godson of the Archbishop of Canterbury, communist, librettist, publisher, propagandist, poet and war-hero. Focuses on the Second World War and the story of the African and Italian campaigns, recorded uniquely through the eyes of the ordinary soldier. A case-study of the intellectual consequences of the Cold War in Britain, McCarthyism AND Zhdanovism. It is a book about poetry and music. And it is a love story. A wholly original contribution to an area of literary history which reclaims the lost history of the London literary Left. Differs from most other books about poetry and politics in Britain in the middle decades of the twentieth century by drawing on new and original sources.