The Years of Anger

Reviews / Votes

A genuinely ground-breaking biography that restores to view a forgotten world of left culture in twentieth-century Britain. - Ben Harker, University of Manchester, UK

Unjustly 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 A genuinely ground-breaking biography that restores to view a forgotten world of left culture in twentieth-century Britain. - Ben Harker, University of Manchester, UK

Unjustly 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

This beautifully written and researched biography, especially strong on the now forgotten but once very influential Communist background and foreground, will surely make an unknown name a memorable one. - Nicholas Jacobs, Camden New Journal, UK

The journey detailed in Andy Croft's biography spans the most turbulent decades of the twentieth century... This biography will be of interest not only to historians of the British left... There is a wealth of closely researched information here... Croft comments extensively on the poetry which he knows inside out. - Ben Thompson, Socialist History, Volume 59, UK

Talk with Andy Croft, the author, as part of the Working Class Movement Library (WCML) Invisible Histories series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0AIEK9j_as