Early life; joining the Communist Party at the LSE, European travels in France and Nazi Germany - Stories of war service as an Anti-Aircraft Gunnery Sergeant-Major - WW2 army life in India- colonialism and the Communist Party - Teaching at the Department of Economic History at the University of Hull - Deeply involved in the crisis of the British Communist Part in 1956, following the Soviet invasion of Hungary. - Acquaintances and co- thinkers: the MI5 agent planted at his home in Hull, John Griffith, Stuart Hall, Philip Larkin, Doris Lessing, Ralph Miliband, Sir John Pratt, Raphael Samuel, EP Thompson, - Working against America's Cold War politics - Editing the Dictionary of Labour Biography and the Socialist Register - Life in Hull, perspectives on a the rightward drift of Labour