New Kid on the Blog: Another radical historian turns to self-publishing

Pete Grafton, author of YOU, YOU & YOU!  The People Out of Step with World War II (Pluto Press, 1981)  has recently started his own blog at <http://petegrafton.wordpress.com >. He intends to publish the original, longer version of the book online in late Spring, and to follow it with an interesting new project resulting from his work on letters written in the late 1940s to and from Glasgow, Cairo, and Porton Down.

YOU, YOU & YOU!  pioneered a type of historical method which is now much more generally accepted, even in mainstream academic circles, as both valid and important: encouraging non-famous, non-line-toeing people who were there to speak in their own words about what it was like. Among other writers who have referred to it, Alan Woodward used Pete’s interview cassette and transcripts in After Cable Street – Joe Jacobs 1940 to 1977 (Socialist Libertarians, 2011, reviewed on this blog*) as his main source along with Joe’s papers  for the section on Joe and the war.

L.W.

* By the way, Alan seemed pleased with this review and said it made valid points. He suggested that it should be published in Black Flag, as it has been.