Tristram Hunt – The Frock Coated Communist (2009)
Biography – 400 pages – my copy (paperback; 2010) a present from the one-and-only anti-socialist, Roy Cook, in April 2010
- 4 nods out of 5 -
The recent economic recession – the worst for eighty years – has made communism somewhat fashionable again. There have been new prints of the manifesto, documentaries upon Marx, and fresh evaluations of his “bulldog” Friedrich Engels.
Despite being the understudy for many years, to both contemporaries and commentators ever since, Engels has found a kind and considerate biographer in Tristram Hunt. The author - since May 2010 serving as MP for Stoke-On-Trent – has made a name for himself as one of Britain’s most promising historians. As enterprising as the likes of Niall Ferguson, he has shown himself at home in teaching, in study, upon the television, the radio, and amongst the sharp teeth of Westminster.
The reader is taken a journey throughout Engels’ life, from his birth into a Protestant bourgeois household, his birth as a revolutionary, his meeting with Marx, and later years as both the ‘Grand Lama of the Regent’s Park Road’ and ‘Marx’s Bulldog’. Hunt is great at constructing the narrative, at bringing in the (often complex) philosophical background, as well as providing colour to Engels and Marx; the author delighting at mining the wealth of letters sent between the pair over four decades. Furthermore, Hunt uses wide and extensive research, from Russian to German archives, to give us, the reader, a first class experience.
It is the opening chapters, of Engels’ communist awakening, in which Hunt keeps the reader entertained. From travelling to the Russian town of Engels in the book’s opening, to charting Engels’ young life in entertaining fashion. It is a shame the middle years do not fare well; but this is not unsurprising: Engels was becoming older, no longer dashing from country to country to give energy to the communist rise. The narrative is lost, Hunt preferring to note the general themes and threads of the 1850s, ‘60s and ‘70s until Engels’ retirement, when once again he could return full-time to his passion.
It is doubtful if Hunt’s study will become the principal study for readers, but it stands high and tall at bringing Engels back from the dead. In these uncertain economic times, the modern world could easily do with a living Engels and his vest for new ideas and methods.
Biography – 400 pages – my copy (paperback; 2010) a present from the one-and-only anti-socialist, Roy Cook, in April 2010
- 4 nods out of 5 -
The recent economic recession – the worst for eighty years – has made communism somewhat fashionable again. There have been new prints of the manifesto, documentaries upon Marx, and fresh evaluations of his “bulldog” Friedrich Engels.
Despite being the understudy for many years, to both contemporaries and commentators ever since, Engels has found a kind and considerate biographer in Tristram Hunt. The author - since May 2010 serving as MP for Stoke-On-Trent – has made a name for himself as one of Britain’s most promising historians. As enterprising as the likes of Niall Ferguson, he has shown himself at home in teaching, in study, upon the television, the radio, and amongst the sharp teeth of Westminster.
The reader is taken a journey throughout Engels’ life, from his birth into a Protestant bourgeois household, his birth as a revolutionary, his meeting with Marx, and later years as both the ‘Grand Lama of the Regent’s Park Road’ and ‘Marx’s Bulldog’. Hunt is great at constructing the narrative, at bringing in the (often complex) philosophical background, as well as providing colour to Engels and Marx; the author delighting at mining the wealth of letters sent between the pair over four decades. Furthermore, Hunt uses wide and extensive research, from Russian to German archives, to give us, the reader, a first class experience.
It is the opening chapters, of Engels’ communist awakening, in which Hunt keeps the reader entertained. From travelling to the Russian town of Engels in the book’s opening, to charting Engels’ young life in entertaining fashion. It is a shame the middle years do not fare well; but this is not unsurprising: Engels was becoming older, no longer dashing from country to country to give energy to the communist rise. The narrative is lost, Hunt preferring to note the general themes and threads of the 1850s, ‘60s and ‘70s until Engels’ retirement, when once again he could return full-time to his passion.
It is doubtful if Hunt’s study will become the principal study for readers, but it stands high and tall at bringing Engels back from the dead. In these uncertain economic times, the modern world could easily do with a living Engels and his vest for new ideas and methods.
