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Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

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What's the name of that massive liar journo who was I think best mates with a soviet bigwig in the scw, mentioned here previously & gets about 2 lines in Preston's We Saw Spain Die book. Claud Cockburn?
 
killer b said:
Dunno. I only read the first one after growing pains, and it was shit. Pandora became a labour party policy wonk though, fittingly enough.

I imagine the first two are probably shit too, but they were amazing when I was 13.
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bollocks :mad: don't diss the wonderful sue townsend
 
killer b said:
Why not? I've tried a few since I've been an adult purely out of loyalty to the memory of mole. They've all been embarrassingly bad.

Did you read 'the queen and i'? Jaw droppingly shit.
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No, I haven't read the Queen and I. I still think the first two Mole books are wonderful, and I guess I love the fact that the best selling British author in Thatcher's 80s was an old lefty.

I don't usually go in for 'national treasures' type guff but I think Townsend (and Kathy Burke) qualify.
 
imposs1904 said:
No, I haven't read the Queen and I. I still think the first two Mole books are wonderful, and I guess I love the fact that the best selling British author in Thatcher's 80s was an old lefty.

I don't usually go in for 'national treasures' type guff but I think Townsend (and Kathy Burke) qualify.
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Get back to radio 4.
 
copliker said:
What's the name of that massive liar journo who was I think best mates with a soviet bigwig in the scw, mentioned here previously & gets about 2 lines in Preston's We Saw Spain Die book. Claud Cockburn?
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Certainly sounds like Claud :D
 
There's a collection of his Daily Worker pieces on Span called Cockburn in Spain that is absolutely hilariously tragic. The most feted pack of lies i've ever read.
 
I'll have to dig out his memoir and finish it now. From memory it starts out with him acting like a freelance secret agent vs Nazism, terribly Hitchcock-meets-Herge.
 
DaveCinzano said:
I'll have to dig out his memoir and finish it now. From memory it starts out with him acting like a freelance secret agent vs Nazism, terribly Hitchcock-meets-Herge.
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The full three volumes or the edited highlights penguin paperback? Its a good read, but as you say the man was a shit. Have his sons ever tried to defend his "legacy"?
 
butchersapron said:
There's a collection of his Daily Worker pieces on Span called Cockburn in Spain that is absolutely hilariously tragic. The most feted pack of lies i've ever read.
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Happened to be reading up on a bloke who's known as a scholar and translator of Buddhism called Edward Conze (edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Conze), and turns out he was in the Communist Party in Germany in his youth, organising workers' defence squads etc., then ended up in Spain and wrote a book called Spain To-Day Revolution and Counter-Revolution, talking about POUM in English before even Orwell (it says here). Fuck all to do with Penny I know but since Spain came up, thought it was interesting and wondered if you/anyone has read it. Him being a Marxist in his youth throws a bit of light on why his histories/descriptions of Buddhist thought are less woo than anyone else's, despite him being into it in his later years.
 
Can't say i've heard him - his book doesn't appear in the index or bibliographies of Beating the Fascists: The German Communists and Political Violence, Communist Resistance in Nazi Germany or Communism in Germany under the Weimar Republic. Never trust anyone who was ever attracted - even momentarily - by Theosophy.
 
butchersapron said:
Can't say i've heard him - his book doesn't appear in the index or bibliographies of Beating the Fascists: The German Communists and Political Violence, Communist Resistance in Nazi Germany or Communism in Germany under the Weimar Republic. Never trust anyone who was ever attracted - even momentarily - by Theosophy.
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Might be worth a look as he wrote it at the time (37 I think), well before his Buddhist phase.
ETA: Tho looking at that Wiki link, he was into Theosophy and astrology back then too, so maybe not much cop!
ETA: Here's the book: http://archive.org/details/spaintodayrevolu009757mbp
 
articul8 said:
Has she had some spat with David Starkey?
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Apparently she called him for saying something racist about muslim rape gangs on stage at some educational festival, and he got up and jabbed his finger in her face and called her 'a little shit' and 'despicable'
 
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