A radical romance : a memoir of love, grief and consolation

**WINNER OF THE PEN ACKERLEY PRIZE** **'The greatest memoirs offer all the complex shades and colours that we expect in fiction. __A Radical Romance__ is more than just some summing-up: it is a work of art'** __Guardian__ Alison Light met the charismatic social historian, Raphael Samuel, in London in 1986. Within a year they were married. Within ten, Raphael would be dead. Theirs was an attraction of opposites - he, twenty years her senior, from a Jewish Communist family with its roots in Russia and Eastern Europe, she from the English working class. In this chronicle of a passionate marriage, Alison Light peels back the layers of their time together, its intimacies and its estrangements. __A Radical Romance__ is a luminous account of love and loss, and a celebration of our transformative capacity to share our lives and change our selves. **'Displays her usual sharp but sympathetic appreciation of the finest gradations of culture and class'** Margaret Drabble, __TLS__, Books of the Year **'She writes with precision and tenderness about loss. __A Radical Romance__** **is an admirable tribute to a man, a period of rapid change in London, and an unusual marriage' Stephanie Merritt,** __Observer__ **'Extremely interesting, moving, brilliantly written, as one would expect from Alison Light'** Claire Tomalin Alison Light met the radical social historian, Raphael Samuel, in London in 1986. Twenty years her senior, Raphael was a charismatic figure on the British Left, utterly driven by his work and by a commitment to collective politics. Within a year they were married. Within ten, Raphael would be dead. Theirs was an attraction of opposites - he from a Jewish Communist family with its roots in Russia and Eastern Europe, she from the English working class. In this chronicle of a passionate marriage, Alison Light peels back the layers of their time together, its intimacies and its estrangements. She tells of moving into Raphael's cluttered 18th-century house in Spitalfields and into his equally full, unconventional life; of the whirlwind of change outside their door which brutally transformed London's old East End districts; of being widowed at 41, and finding inspiration in her friendship with Raphael's mother. Finally she reflects on the power of mourning and how it shapes a life. Through its frank and touching account of a marriage between two very different people, it celebrates the capacity we all have to share our lives and to change our selves. -- Provided by publisher