In July 1961, just before David Aaronovitch's seventh birthday, Yuri Gagarin came to London. The Russian cosmonaut was everything the Aaronovitch family wished for - a popular and handsome embodiment of modern communism.
But who were they, these ever hopeful, defiant and (had they but known it) historically doomed people? Like a non-magical version of the wizards of J. K. Rowling's world, they lived secretly with and parallel to the non-communist majority, sometimes persecuted, sometimes ignored, but carrying on their own ways and traditions. Where others went to church they went to Socialist Sunday School, society's up was their down and its heroes were their villains. Who wanted American TV when you could have Russian movies?
A memoir of early life among communists, Party Animals first took David Aaronovitch back through his own memories of belief and action. But there was much more to it. He found himself studying the old secret service files, uncovering the unspoken shame and fears that provided the unconscious background to his own existence as a party animal.
Only then did he begin to understand what had come before - both the obstinate heroism and the monstrous cowardice. And the elements that shape our fondest beliefs.
Industry Reviews
An affectionate and insightful account of 20th-century history that also amounts to a manifesto for the power of words - and belonging. -- Helen Davies * Sunday Times, Book of the Year *
Compassionate and wise... An effervescent and essential writer. -- Nick Cohen * Observer *
David Aaronovitch is to be congratulated on his Le Carre like sleuthing into the deceits and self-delusions of his parents and their communist friends. He has produced a wise, funny and sometimes heart-breaking account of how otherwise good and nice people are capable of believing a load of total and utter b*ll*cks about the world, the class system and themselves. It is an invocation of a vanished tribe that is still relevant, alas, to the Britain of Jeremy Corbyn, Ken Livingstone and Owen Jones, I loved it. -- Boris Johnson
Party Animals is an utterly engaging and truly humane story about fitting in, opting out, and finding meaning. Unflinchingly honest, it is by turns harrowing and hilarious. Not since Clive James's Falling Towards England has there been a memoir so clearly destined to become a classic in its own time. -- Amanda Foreman
David Aaronovitch has written a compelling account of the Communist mindset in post-war Britain: a superb mix of social history, Marxist philosophy and often painful family biography. It is a hugely revelatory insight into a lost world and its modern legacies. -- Tristram Hunt
A raw...extraordinary new memoir-cum-social history... Vivid and moving. -- Rachel Cooke * Observer *
The extraordinarily gripping final section... elevates his book above similar memoirs by other children of party members... Tremendously frank, often moving. -- Dominic Sandbrook * Sunday Times *
A colourful, sentimental, damning and funny part-history, part-autobiography. That is, until an extraordinarily brutal final chapter... [that] reveals Party Animals to be more than just a revealing memoir, but, hopefully, Mr Aaronovitch's catharsis. -- Mark Leftly * Independent on Sunday *
Deeply personal... A clever and moving portrait of a strange, unexplored subculture, of dedicated self-education by desperately poor young men, of undoubtedly good causes adopted for the advancement of a wicked and dangerous purpose. -- Peter Hitchens * Mail on Sunday *
A rich and forensic examination, all the more uncomfortable for its honesty and the authoritative knowledge of Left-wing politics that Aaronovitch brings to it ... Like Lorna Sage's Bad Blood, this is a riveting autobiography that forces you to think about your own family history. * Evening Standard *
An uncommonly gripping book, not just as political or social history...but as an account of the lies that families tell themselves to survive. -- Robert Hanks * Daily Telegraph *
An honest portrait of communist obsession... A stirring personal yet expansive history of the ideals his committed communist parents strived towards... Aaronovitch fuses his adolescent memories with historical landmarks in the communist way of life... A memoir's reach is too narrow, a historical biography's too vast. Party Animals is a smart and well-balanced mix. -- Guy Pewsey * Independent *
In his closely observed memoir...Aaronovitch has concentrated both the tragedy and comedy of western communism into a family, his own... The description Aaronovitch gives of his family and of the Party community is rich, subtle and poignant... The best thing he has done. -- John Lloyd * Financial Times *
A painfully honest memoir. -- John Sutherland * The Times *
Aaronovitch's song of love and pain for the lost family of British communism. -- Martin Kettle * Guardian *
