in the Penguin edition. Not sure Reed would have liked it, mind. Suggests that Reed got most of his info about the Russian Revolution from other journalists, never having been in person at many of the important meetings. That said, Taylor liked the book. So did Lenin! Which is not a recommendation, in my view. There's a tremendous film on the life of Reed called Reds, with Warren Beatty n Diane Keating.

Reed was well taken in by the Bolsheviks. Or maybe he just thought it acceptable to kill loads of workers in the name of revolution. I wonder what he thought when he saw the bosses being returned to their former positions of power in the factories or the generals of the tzarist White armies being given positions in the Red army after they surrendered.

A better book, by far, is The Bolshevik Myth, by Alexander Berkman, a diary of his 2 years spent in Russia during the Revolution. Starts off on board the Buford, the ship carrying him n his fellow Russians and Ukrainians to Russia after they've been unceremoniously dragged from their prison cells in the middle of the night, where he and his fellow inmates had been put for protesting the First World War. It shows his initial delight at hearing of the Revolution which he offers his full support. By the end of his 2-year diary he sees his dreams shattered by the Bolsheviks.

No recommendation by Lenin for this book. Strange that. Nor by AJP Taylor either.

Taylor, incidentally, also wrote an introduction to my copy of The Communist Manifesto.

Always liked AJP Taylor. Marched to the beat of his own drummer. Didn't care a toss what other people thought of him.