'We have waited a long time for this war's All Quiet on the Western
Front, ' wrote the critic V.S. Pritchett. 'Here It is.' He was
reviewing the 1948 novel From the City From the Plough by Alexander
Baron (1917-1999). With its success, Baron became a full-time writer.
His best-known later novels include The Human Kind (1953), The
Lowlife (1963), and King Dido (1969). Between the 1950s and 1980s he
also wrote many film and television scripts. Here Baron recounts the
experiences of his childhood and youth that shaped him as a writer and
provided subject matter for his novels. He evokes the sights, sounds,
and aromas surrounding him growing up in a Jewish family in Hackney,
East London, in the 1920s. Later, aware of the rising fascist threat,
Baron was drawn to left-wing politics, becoming a leader of Labour's
youth organisation. Although not formally a member, he also worked
secretly for the Communist Party as an organiser and propagandist. With
World War Two his life changed again. A keen solider, he fought with the
Pioneer Corps in Sicily, Italy, and northern France. After a hard
transition to post-war life, he worked at Unity Theatre in London while
writing his breakthrough novel.
