Paul Foot was a campaigning journalist for the Daily Mirror and Private Eye and a political agitator. He wrote sixty pieces for the LRB, on miscarriages of justice, MI5, corrupt Tory MPs (Jeffrey Archer, Jonathan Aitken and Neil Hamilton), Harold Wilson, the strange death of the anti-nuclear campaigner Hilda Murrell, Shelley the revolutionary, abuse in children’s homes and his own beating at school by the serial abuser and future headmaster of Eton, Anthony Chevenix-Trench. As Mary-Kay Wilmers wrote after his death in 2004, he ‘included a standard Socialist Worker harangue in every piece for the sheer joy of watching us take it out’. Despite his indignation at the state of the world, he was a man of great energy and good humour. ‘Paul enjoyed the books he wrote about,’ Wilmers said. ‘And when he didn’t like them he enjoyed that too.’
If there is one term that illustrates the rapidity with which historical truth can degenerate before one’s very eyes, that term is ‘Vietnam Syndrome’. According to those who...
When historians come to account for the dégringolade of modern British politics both Tony Benn and Paul Foot will find a place: Benn as actor, Foot as an observer. The two have much in...
Paul Foot has a shocking story to tell, the story of Colin Wallace. It is, quite literally, a story of gunpowder, treason and plot. The fact that Foot’s publishers have had to rush the book...
The legal process, at least in English law, is a quite inadequate instrument for arriving at the truth about a crime. This is not necessarily an adverse comment. There is justification for...
Lawrence was attracted to Arabia by what he called ‘the Arab gospel of bareness’, as well as by his desire to play the Middle East version of the Great Game. The present generation of...
We can know Byron better than anyone has ever known him. Leslie Marchand’s edition of the Letters and Journals, which is far more extensive than any previous collection, has now covered...
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