Ian Jack writes:

What stands out from Livingstone’s account is how his politics were formed as much by the struggle against social convention at home as by oppression abroad; the local park-keeper, vigilant for any sign of al fresco sex, was a much closer enemy than the American bomber or the Soviet tank. Personal encounters and testimony affected his beliefs more than protest marches or polemic. Some Ghanaians he worked beside in the labs at Chester Beatty became his first black friends after they heard him attack the Wilson government’s nervous dealings with Ian Smith’s Rhodesia. Openly gay men and women were less easily happened on – Livingstone reckons he had met no more than four or five by his late twenties – but he was untroubled when the Gay Liberation Front encouraged many more to declare themselves and gave them a political voice. ‘I had picked up a more tolerant approach on gay issues,’ he writes, ‘because Mum had worked with gay people throughout her dancing career and she always made clear to me and Linda how nice she had found them.’

(LRB 10 May 2012)

Faber | Paperback 720 pp. |ISBN: 9780571280414