ISABEL CROOK (1915-2023) was a pioneering anthropologist, committed communist and rare bridge between the West and China. She was renowned, with husband David, for the study Ten Mile Inn: Mass Movement in a Chinese Village, an invaluable record of the Communist Party of China’s mass line in action.

Isabel spent most of her life in China and was to witness its remarkable transformation from a war-torn land of beggars, bandits and people in rags under a corrupt Kuomintang (KMT) government to a country set on a path to prosperity, overcoming the problems of poverty, unemployment and instability, under communist leadership.

During the Cultural Revolution, she was kept in confinement by Red Guards for three years, receiving an apology from Zhou Enlai in 1973. In 1989, with David, she called on the government not to use force against the Tiananmen protesters. Isabel nevertheless was to remain optimistic about China’s future under CPC leadership.