The Left Book Club is something of a legend. Founded by Victor Gollancz in 1936 to distribute cheap, radical books, it was a spectacular success, with nearly 60,000 members at its peak. Taxi drivers and accountants suddenly started reading Marxist polemics; discussion groups sprang up in nearly every town in the country. Gollancz's publishing scheme became an influential political movement, attacking Fascism at home and abroad. Always controversial, its famous orange volumes told stories of life in Britain's industrial towns, rebellion in Hitler's Germany and heroism in the Spanish Civil War. The Club also became the focus for a bewildering amount of cultural activity - theatre, film, travel, country dancing, rambling, poetry-reading.This anthology goes back to the monthly selections themselves and recaptures the fervour and idealism of the 1930s - the 'Red Decade'. It includes extracts from many of the Club's most popular books, including Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier, Koestler's Spanish Testament, Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China and Wilfred Macartney's Walls Have Mouths, a sensational' account of eight years inside Parkhurst by one of the century's most inept spies. Paul Laity introduces each extract and contributes an excellent general introduction explaining the political and cultural context of the Club.