Years of Anger

Andy Croft has published numerous anthologies of poetry as well as several previous studies of Randall Swingler and of political literature including Randall Swingler: Poet of the Italian Campaign (2008); Comrade Heart: A Life of Randall Swingler (2003); A Weapon in the Struggle: Essays on the Cultural History of the Communist Party of Great Britain (1998); and Red Letter Days: British Fiction in the 1930s (1990).

• 1. Home2. School3. Oxford4. Entrance to the City5. 19376. 19387. 19398. Imperialist War9. Signals10. Italy11. Victory12. London13. Cold War14. 195615. The People’s Republic of Pebmarsh16. The True Dark

A genuinely ground-breaking biography that restores to view a forgotten world of left culture in twentieth-century Britain. — Ben Harker, University of Manchester, UKUnjustly neglected as a poet, Randall Swingler is one of the most fascinating figures in the cultural history of British communism. Scholarly, empathetic and beautifully written, Andy Croft's biography is a wonderful work of retrieval and one of the best accounts we have of the cultural politics of the popular front and cold war years. — Kevin Morgan, University of Manchester, UK...Croft tells the story with his usual clarity and balance. For the main part, Croft limits himself to chronicling the facts, but when he allows himself to make judgments and interpretations, these are always to the point... It is impossible to imagine a more sensitive summary of this tragic life. — Robert Chandler, Poet and Literary Translator, UK[T]he biographer must be fully at home with the events and impacts of the age of his or her subject and, at the same time and without the imaginative freedom of fiction, convey that subject’s personal life experiences, feelings and responses. Andy Croft successfully meets those criteria in his biography of Randall Swingler… [he] is in an ideal position to rescue Swingler the man and the poet from anonymity. — Gordon Parsons, the Morning Star, UK