A dangerous fellow

Do we need another huge life of Arthur Koestler? He wrote a great deal about himself, including three autobiographical works: Spanish Testament (1937), describing his experience as a death-row prisoner of General Franco, Arrow in the Blue (1952) and The Invisible Writing (1954). He also contributed to The God that Failed, the fascinating collection of testimonies by former Communists which Dick Crossman edited in 1949. He and his last wife wrote an unfinished joint memoir, published a year after their deaths as Stranger on the Square (1984). An ex-wife, Mamaine, contributed a volume, Living with Koestler (1985). Then a quarter-century after his death came a large-scale 640-page biography entitled Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind by David Cesarani (1998). Cesarani told me that he had begun his work as a Koestler admirer but had gradually turned against him in the course of his extensive researches. It would be unfair to call the book a hostile biography, but it left a nasty taste.

Michael Scammell’s new life is an attempt to redress the balance, and restore to Koestler some of the moral integrity damaged by Cesarani’s findings. He has done a great deal of hard work: interviewing a hundred or so survivors who knew Koestler, using unpublished letters and diaries and delving into the archives of MI5, the CIA, the French Sûreté and various Communist parties. There is a good deal that is new in the book, albeit nothing sensationally revealing. It is generally a good read, and while I do not think it succeeds in its main objective, it casts a lurid light on the ideological wars of those painful decades, the Thirties, Forties and Fifties. Those interested in Koestler will have to read both books, and make up their own minds which gives the truer picture of the man.

There is no argument about Koestler’s importance.