Notes from the End of History

After the collapse of the Soviet Union it was widely believed that Marxists would be all but extinct by the year 2000. Humanity, wrote Francis Fukuyama, had come to the "end of history". All thoughts of finding an alternative to capitalism could be forgotten. Such thinking was wide of the mark. So why did so many people retain a faith in Marxism after the disappearance of 'actually existing socialism'? Set largely in Wales but ranging widely across the recent history of the British left, Philip Bounds's memoir evokes an age in which Marxism faltered, came close to dying but made a dramatic recovery. It sheds new light on many of the most important political and cultural events of the 1980s and 1990s. Howard Moss of Swansea University has described it as 'a book full of lively and interesting characters who come alive on its pages via the eminently readable, nay gripping, style in which it is written.' ('The joke in the department was that a bunch of daffodils had turned black and died when he bought them for a colleague as a retirement present.')