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Paul Foot was one of the most influential investigative reporters of his generation. For nearly fifty years, he was the scourge of corrupt politicians and dodgy businessmen, a champion of the underdog.
In this, the first biography of Paul Foot, journalist Margaret Renn traces Foot’s personal, political and professional trajectories, placing his life and works within the long arc of postwar Britain. Drawing on extensive interviews with those close to him, and utilizing her unparalleled knowledge of his prodigious output, the book brings the many different faces of Paul Foot together into a single portrait.
A prolific writer for the
Daily Mirror,
Private Eye, the
Guardian and
Socialist Worker, Foot’s investigations broke numerous major stories. He wrote about ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events, and the issues in some of his campaigns maintained their prominence long after his death in 2004: police corruption in the Stephen Lawrence case; sexual abuse in children’s homes; the Lockerbie bombing. His books ranged from how politicians used race to win votes, through miscarriages of justice, to the politics of poetry and the failure of the vote to deliver power to the people.
Paul Foot: A Life in Politics is a brilliant portrait of a committed and active socialist, orator and relentless investigator of wrongdoing.
List of contents
Introduction: Our Left Foot
1. Mangoes in the Bath
2. An Inky Little Boy
3. Paradise on Earth
4. No Mean City
5. The Leper
6. A Bee to the Honeypot
7. Tightnits
8. Who Killed Hanratty?
9. One Glorious Summer
10. Y, Oh Lord, Oh Why
11. Vote for Foot
12. Honey on the Elbow
13. The Ditto Man
14. Poetry and Revolution
15. Look in the Mirror
16. The Enemy Within
17. Pamphleteer
18. Baldric’s Cunning Plan
19. Who Killed Carl Bridgewater?
20. A Rattling Good Yarn
21. To Divide Is Not to Take Away
22. The Hired Bravos
23. The Great Crook
24. Back to the Honeypot
25. Head and Heart
26. Skinning the Tiger
27. Perfidious Financial Idiocy
28. The White Radiance of Eternity
Bibliography of Paul Foot WorksNotesIndex
About the author
Margaret Renn
Summary
A portrait of a brilliant journalist and tireless campaigner for justice
