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GORDON PARSONS recommends an entertaining account of the years between Germany’s defeat in WWI and Hitler’s seizure of power
Elegant attack on a complex communist
A new book on the controversial Spanish communist leader Santiago Carrillo is a well-crafted hatchet job. But it doesn’t tell the whole story, says Tom Sibley
MIGUEL YOSHIDA explains the evolution and influence of the Cuban Casa De Las Americas in joining culture to the revolutionary struggle
ANDY HEDGECOCK is charmed by a skilful adaptation of Tove Jansson’s lyrical portrait of three generations of a family, overcoming grief
ALEX HALL treads warily through a messy, dialectical struggle fought in the mundane machinery of driving licences, criminal law, and birth registries
MICHAL BONCZA, FIONA O’CONNOR, JAMES WALSH and ANGUS REID review Atlas of Disappearance, Love Me Tender, Bouchra, and This Tempting Madness
Flitting between myth and the modern world, Medusa is determined to steer clear of human affairs. When her resolve crumbles, the result is petrifying in every sense
The Last Stalinist: The Life of Santiago Carrillo, by Paul Preston (Harper Collins, £30)
In his early 20s Santiago Carrillo (1915-2012) was a leading figure in the Spanish civil war and from 1960-82 general secretary of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE). From the 1960s he became a powerful advocate of Eurocommunism and increasingly critical of the Soviet Union and the world communist movement.
On the face of it, then, plenty of meat for a biographer to chew on. With his deserved reputation as an outstanding historian and self-confessed man of the left, Paul Preston, who knew Carrillo, would seem to be the ideal person to tell that story.
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