DAVID YEARSLEY is fascinated by the account of four composers who transformed their experiences of the second world war and the Holocaust into deeply moving works of art
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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
PETER MASON thrills to the sound of south London-born Yussef Dayes, and the galaxy of musicians drawn into his orbit
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JAMIE BRITTON recommends that we all buy at least two copies of a remarkable book of poems
Re-releases from Iain Matthews, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and The Charlie Daniels Band
JAMIE BRITTON recommends that we all buy at least two copies of a remarkable book of poems
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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