Remember Robert Conquest

[Togo]

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/05/robert-conquest

A great man passes. No doubt the left wing echo chamber is already trawling for a victim, to accuse him of sex crimes.
There was a great Marxist called Lenin
Who did two or three million men in
That's a lot to have done in
But where he did one in
That great Marxist Stalin did ten in.

[sandyRoe]

You've hinted at his peccadillos, what were they?

[Togo]

I did not know him but can imagine he was fond of shafting communists.

[sandyRoe]

And licking up to rich right-wing Americans?

[Togo]

And they to him sandy.

[sandyRoe]

Chacun a son gout.

[fiction-factory]

I recall that he was a Communist at Oxford

[douglas9401]

Weren't they all? :-)

[-Talbot-]

All this leftie nonsense is getting beyond a joke. You have managed to subvert your own thread.

[-Talbot-]

Fiction Factory makes an excellent point.

'Conquest went up to Oxford, joining both the Carlton Club and, as an "open" member, the Communist Party of Great Britain.'

wiki.

Were you working on an assumption when you posted this and didn't really know much about Robert Conquest? (I knew nothing of him btw)

[vetuste_ennemi]

I read The Great Terror in my twenties and recommend this book to everyone who is interested in the nature and techniques of tyranny and the defence of the open society against its enemies. I don't understand the reason for your snide gibe, Sandy; it's obvious that you haven't read the book.

[sandyRoe]

I think Darkness at Noon was enough for me.
It was Togo who first mentioned he might be accused of 'sexual crimes'.

[Togo]

I was fully aware that he was a member of the communist party Talbot and like vetuste read his book The Great Terror when I was 21 yrs old. Never forgot it Unlike the rest of the Oxford lot he had a weakness for the ladies. Poacher turned Gamekeeper. He knew he had been mistaken and unlike his many contemporaries was not afraid to admit it.

[vetuste_ennemi]

Reading the link more thoroughly I see that he was not only a friend of Kingsley Amis, but a co-author with him of the Egyptologists. I never spotted that at the time, although I think I read everything Amis wrote back then. Can't even remember the plot of the novel (something to do with being a senile dipsomaniac, I suppose). Another book I'll have to reread.

[-Talbot-]

So what was the left wing echo chamber all about?

[Haggisdj]

Whatever happened to his brother Norman?

[wolf63]

We actually had a chemistry teacher called Norman Conquest way back when I went to school.

[wolf63]

Togo - did you realise that you are still logged into your Guardian account?

[Togo]

wolf63 as far as I can make out I am logged out. Lappie has been logged out and closed down whilst I was out. My dad worked with a fellow builder who called himself William the concreter.

[wolf63]

If you find any 'saved' stories for you to read it wasn't me that did it.

William the Concreter :-)

[Peter Pedant]

.

He wrote on Reds under the Bed when there were -
and strode the corridors of power on the back of it

and he didnt do much else ( that is - he put bread on the table by banging the silent red menace drum )

Oh and he predicted the modern soviet system was inherently so unstable that it would implode ( at a time that everyone else thought it would take over half the world by fair means or foul )