Michael Burleigh
He Told Us So
The Dragons of Expectation: Reality and Delusion in the Course of History
By Robert Conquest
Duckworth 256pp £18 order from our bookshop
Recently I have been reading some of the large-scale histories of the 1960s. A test of whether they are any good or not as guides to what was lasting and significant in that decade, when the ephemeral became an art form, has been seeing whether they mention the publication in 1968 of Robert Conquest’s masterly The Great Terror. One book does mention Conquest, but in the context of his friendships with Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin. Most just drone on about the sexual appetites of juveniles or enthuse over the Beatles and rioting students.
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