Class Act: The Cultural and Political Life of Ewan MacColl

by Ben Harker

Overview

Ewan MacColl is one of the outstanding British singers and songwriters of the mid to late 20th century,and his work has been covered by artists including Roberta Flack, Johnny Cash and the Pogues. He was also a committed political activist.

For sixty years he was at the cultural forefront of numerous political struggles,producing plays,songs and radio programs on subjects ranging from the Spanish Civil War to the Poll Tax. A founder-member of Theatre Workshop,MacColl as the famous company's resident dramatist,and his plays earned the admiration of contemporaries including George Bernard Shaw,Sean O'Casey and Hugh MacDiarmid. MacColl lived an energetic and colorful life.

This is the first biography of MacColl, and was prepared with the authorization of his collaborator and widow, Peggy Seeger. It charts MacColl's early years, his involvement in the Communist Party, in radical theatre, his pioneering radio programs,as well as his extensive work in the British folk-revival. Exhaustively researched and energetically written, this is an illuminating account of a major and controversial twentieth-century political artist.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780745321660
Publisher:	Pluto Press
Publication date:	09/26/2007

About the Author

Ben Harker is Lecturer in English and Cultural Studies at the University of Salford. This is his first book.

Table of Contents

Preface
1. Lower Broughton
2. Red Haze
3. Welcome, Comrade
4. Browned Off
5. A Richer, Fuller Life
6. Towards a People's Culture
7. Croydon, Soho, Moscow, Paris
8. Bard of Beckenham
9. Let a Hundred Flowers Blossom
10. Sanctuary
11. Endgame
Notes
Index