Dave Renton and Keith Flett, The Twentieth Century, A Century of Wars and Revolutions

This book was published by Rivers Oram, London, 2000. ISBN 1854891278. £13.99. Rivers Oram can be contacted at 144 Hemingford Road, London N1 1DE. The book is a collection of essays written following a conference of the London Socialist Historians' Group.

Review: The Loafer, The Guardian, Saturday July 29, 2000.

All hail the new partygoers

The man who has written more swingeing letters than the Loafer has had angels on horseback and Pinot Grigio - Tottenham firebrand Keith Flett - is to produce something that doesn't begin with the words Dear Sir. His subject matter remains reassuringly left of centre, though, as a dip into The Twentieth Century: A Century of Wars and Revolutions, edited with Dave Renton, will demonstrate.

Flett is proving himself a natural convert to the author's life, telling us of a celebratory gathering to mark publication and having a cheeky Follett-style sideswipe at Mr. Blair. Those concerned for Flett's ideological purity, however, need not worry too much: we are sternly informed that the bash won't take place in Islington, but "in the environs of the Marxism 2000 summer school".

Review: Connect Review, July/August 2000

Doubly free?

It has become fashionable to label decades and to assign to them an overall theme. Thus the 1960s were 'swinging' and the 1980s 'greedy'. But what of the 20th century overall? In a new book edited by Central London HQ member Keith Flett and history lecturer Dave Renton, some defining characteristics of the century in which half the world became 'doubly free' - to choose their work and their place of residence - are explored. Renton and Flett have given their book the name The Twentieth Century - A Century of Wars and Revolutions? after some careful analysis of other potential unifying themes.

The essays which make up this book consider globalisation, women's liberation, the Spanish anarchists of the 1930s and the post-second world war boom as well as analysing the myth of unions' responsibility for economic decline.

This book aims to stimulate ideas and to challenge some assumptions about the 20th century and is readable and thought-provoking.