Last English Revolutionary: Tom Wintringham 1898-1949 - Hardcover

This is the untold story of a great character, described in the New Dictionary of National Biography as a 'uniquely British revolutionary', Tom Wintringham. A founder-member of the British Communist party in 1920, he was one of the few bourgeois members to join. His life was eventful, including imprisonment for sedition, time as a combatant in Spain, and being badly wounded when leading the British battalion at the Battle of Jarama. Nursed back to health by his lover, Kitty Bowler, it was an accusation of her being a Trotskyist spy which led to Wintringham's expulsion from the party in 1938. 1940 was Wintringham's finest hour. Inspired by his Spanish experience of a popular front (an alliance of all left-wing parties) he campaigned for a Home Guard and originated an extraordinary guerrilla training school at Osterley Park. Known as the Red Revolutionary, Wintringham was a household name through his campaigning journalism, his broadcasts on the Brains Trust and his popular books. Like his friend George Orwell he was a revolutionary patriot who believed that a social revolution was necessary to defeat the Nazis; his slogan was 'a people's war for a people's peace'.

Hugh Purcell is a writer and film-maker who has made more than 30 historical documentaries which have been broadcast worldwide. His books include The Spanish Civil War(a National Book Club Book of the Year), Fascism and Revolutionary War.