David Aaronovitch

In 1961, just before Aaronovitch's 7th birthday, Yuri Gagarin came to London. The Russian cosmonaut was everything his family wished for - a popular, handsome embodiment of modern communism.

But who were they, these ever defiant and historically doomed people?

They lived secretly alongside the non-communist majority in the UK, sometimes persecuted, sometimes ignored, but carrying on their own ways and traditions. Where others went to church, they went to Socialist Sunday School. Society’s up was their down and its heroes were their villains.

Aaronovitch guides you back through his memories of belief and uncovers old secret service files and the unspoken shame and fears that provided the unconscious background to his own existence as a party animal.

David Aaronovitch is a Times columnist who was once President of the NUS and a communist. He now calls himself a ‘radical moderate’. He has worked in radio, TV, magazines and newspapers.