This collection of biographical essays brings to life a diverse and colourful cavalcade of British revolutionaries from the first part of the 20th century. The cast includes pioneering women Communists, doughty trade union leaders and dusty apparatchiks, together with lawyers, poets, critics and the odd sexual outlaw. The book also depicts the tragic fate of groups of British Communists who encountered Stalinism at first hand in the USSR. Much of the information in this section - as elsewhere in the book - is the result of new research on recently released material from previously closed archives in Moscow.