Adam Sisman

The crusading journalist who lectured on Shelley to coal miners

Loved and admired by fellow writers, Paul Foot was competitive, witty and exhilarating company – a friend of the friendless and a tireless campaigner for justice

Paul Foot in 1977. [Getty Images] 
issue 10 August 2024

‘The politics of Paul Foot are an extraordinary mixture of first-class reporting, primitive Marxism, family wit and fantasy.’ This judgment is taken from a review of Foot’s first book, The Politics of Harold Wilson (1968). The reviewer was well placed to assess it, and, according to this biography, he ‘tore the book apart’.

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