Postgate, Raymond, 1896-1971.

How to make a revolution / Raymond Postgate. (London : Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, 1934.) [Jim Cairns copy with his signature].

Raymond Postgate was one of the founding members of the Communist Party of Great Britain. He was well-known as a writer on radical subjects. This work has chapters on the major revolutionary movements of the past, as well as a chapter on the general strike, on armed revolution and on Communist tactics. He gives advice as to which tactics he considers are likely to work and which tactics are useless. His chapter on Communism includes much criticism of the adherence of the Party in Britain to the dictates of the Comintern, which he believed were inappropriate to local conditions.

The book on display was published by the Hogarth Press, better known as the publisher of Virginia Woolf's novels. However, Virginia's husband, Leonard was a radical and published much left-wing material.

Early in the war Postgate became the editor of Tribune but was removed for his impatience and belligerence, being described by a friend as "one of nature's dissenters, a man with a talent to annoy, fond of argument but immovable once he had taken up a position". He was also known as a man who, from his love of argument, would advance quite moderate issues with extreme passion. (see his DNB entry)

Although he remained a socialist, after the war he became famous as the instigator and editor of the Good Food Guide, which he published from 1951 to 1962.