The Shadow Man

Reviews / Votes

A fascinating study of the intellectual and moral ossification that can result from an addiction to dogma. Geoff Andrews has done his research...well-written and thought-provoking account. Geoff Andrews has done a fine job in piecing together the story. This fascinating biography illuminates the world of the mid-twentieth century Communist intellectuals: the idealism that motivated them, and the choices that they had to make. In his illuminating, sympathetic, but far from sycophantic, biography of Klugmann, a leading member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Geoff Andrews paints a picture of a troubled intellectual who sacrificed his integrity through rigid devotion to the party. fascinating...admirably detailed account... Andrews writes well...Andrews paints a very human picture of Klugmann...impressive book. a complete picture of a truly dedicated revolutionary...extensive and meticulously researched...[Andrews] illuminates the complete story of a brilliant intellectual who gave his life to the Communist Party...fascinating...an important work about a generation that was like no other and a man who was a giant of his time. -- This quite unapologetic and exciting biography rescues James Klugmann from the condescension of posterity and from those of us who regarded him (mistakenly) as simply a dull British communist apparatchik. By strongly contextualizing Klugmann's life, Geoff Andrews gives us a fuller picture of the man, an unswerving communist, a friend of the Cambridge spies, a recruit of Soviet intelligence, a senior SOE operative (under the nose of MI5), a great supporter of Tito before joining in Stalin's fatwa, and, yes, also an ultra-loyalist communist hack.