In his native country, the Left revere Arthur Miller as a paragon of liberal resistance to Cold War anticommunism, while the Right paint him as an overrated and subversive playwright who traded on his public relationship with Marilyn Monroe to earn an unwarranted reputation. The man who emerges from Christopher Bigsby’s well-written and very readable biography, however, is more complex than either of these caricatures.

Miller was not just content to write plays or to write about his plays; he also used his speeches, essays and op-eds to provide critical commentary on the social changes affecting, and sometimes transforming, America and the international community. He was politically engaged from the 1930s onwards. Radicalised