Collection: Tom Wintringham

Tom Wintringham (1898-1949) was a man of action, a revolutionary, a soldier and a poet. During the First World War he served in the Royal Flying Corps; in the Spanish Civil War he commanded the British Battalion of the International Brigade ; in the Second World War he was the driving force and inspiration behind the establishment of the Home Guard. He was a founder member of the Communist Party, and one of the twelve Communist leaders gaoled for 'sedition' in 1925. He edited the Worker's Weekly, helped launch the Daily Worker and was one of the first editors of Left Review. Expelled in 1938 from the Communist Party, Wintringham co-founded the Commonwealth Party and almost won a famous war-time by-election. His poetry was published in many magazines, and his numerous books included The Coming World War, Mutiny, English Captain, The Politics of Victory, People's War and the best-selling Your M.P. Drawing on the newly opened Wintringham archive, this book contains nearly all Tom Wintringham's poems, many of which are published here for the first time. From the Great War and the October Revolution, via the General Strike to Spain and war against Hitler, Wintringham's poems are a unique record of those revolutionary years, a compelling cocktail of ideas and imagination, romance, realism and action.