Books
Three cheers for welcome revival: David Herman reviews three Baron classics
David Herman acclaims Alexander Baron, a novelist whose work is being revisited
August 16, 2019 12:00
2 min read
David Herman acclaims Alexander Baron, a novelist whose work is being revisited
August 16, 2019 12:00From the City, From the Plough (Imperial War Museum Classics, £8.99), With Hope, Farewell (Five Leaves Publications, £9.99), The War Baby Five (Leaves Publications, £9.99) by Alexander Baron
Alexander Baron, born Joseph Alexander Bernstein in 1917, was one of the leading Anglo-Jewish writers of the mid-20th century.
He was an outstanding novelist and, from the 1960s, TV dramatist. As a novelist, his central themes were the Second World War, the Jewish East End and the political left.
From the City, From the Plough (1948) was his first novel and the book that made his name. It was an enormous success, selling half-a-million copies and winning widespread critical acclaim.
The historian Antony Beevor has called it, “undoubtedly one of the very greatest British novels of the Second World War” and it is being republished as one of the first Imperial War Museum Wartime Classics to mark the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the war.
The novel begins as the 5th Battalion of the Wessex Regiment prepare for D Day and the Normandy campaign. It follows the soldiers as they advance into France, enduring attritional combat. Baron is a master storyteller, whether describing battle or the relationships between the men.
With Hope, Farewell was first published in 1952. It tells the story of Mark Strong, a young, Jewish RAF pilot who serves in the war. It follows him from 1928 to 1948, from a schoolboy in Hackney to a war veteran still living in the East End.
What is striking about the early chapters is Baron’s powerful account of antisemitism. Mark and his family go to stay in a genteel bed-and-breakfast establishment on the south coast.
At first, everything goes well but then the Strongs hear another family complaining about their holiday in Bournemouth the year before: “Overrun with Jews. Swarming with ’em.”
It goes from bad to worse. The other family accuse the Strongs of “bringing your Whitechapel ways among decent people.”
The story follows the Strongs back to Hackney. Mark seems ill at ease everywhere, in gentile society but also among his own Jewish family. He seeks a new life and seems to find it in the RAF. At last, during the war, he feels at home but then comes a brutal twist.
With Hope, Farewell is a dark account of Jewish life and how hard it was for a smart young Jew to build a life for himself. Antisemitism looms large from the Bournemouth boarding house to the post-war East End.
The War Baby is darker still. The central characters are two war journalists covering the Spanish Civil War in 1938. Henry Croft is an American political writer who saw action in the First World War and is now based in Barcelona. He has spent two years in the Soviet Union and has seen Stalinism red in tooth and claw.
The other journalist, Frank Brendan, is younger, left-wing and politically naïve, a kind of Owen Jones of his time. He gets to see action against the Fascists, fighting with a diverse group of young, idealistic soldiers, coal-miners, public schoolboys, Jews, all passionately committed to the fight against Franco.
Like Orwell and Koestler, Baron learned that the Communists corrupted everything they touched, from Moscow to Catalonia.
There is one chapter where a Russian Communist is forced to name names, to betray the revolution. It is one of the best pieces of writing Baron ever produced. The passion with which he describes the betrayal of Socialism by the Communists burns red-hot.
These accounts of war, antisemitism and 1930s Communism don’t feel at all dated. They feel both fresh and powerful. This revival, with three novels republished this year, is a welcome reminder of the range and humanity that made Baron one of the leading writers of the mid-20th century.
David Herman is a senior JC reviewer.
