JAMIE BRITTON recommends that we all buy at least two copies of a remarkable book of poems
WHEN Lenin died in at the age of 53 in 1924, despite his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya’s strong protestations, a process of political hagiography was instantly initiated by Joseph Stalin, who set up the Commission for Immortalisation of Lenin’s Memory.
Contrary to Lenin’s own wish for an ordinary funeral, his body was embalmed and put on public display as a quasi religious relic.
Krupskaya pointed out that Lenin had no time for pomp and ceremony and profoundly disliked all adulation sincere or otherwise. She believed his legacy should be honoured by “building kindergartens, housing, factories, libraries and hospitals, homes for the disabled.”
NICK MATTHEWS recalls how the ideals of socialism and the holding of goods in common have an older provenance than you might think
Still the only black man to win the US Open tennis title, a statue of the legendary champion, Arthur Ashe, is now the only one remaining on Monument Avenue in his Richmond, Virginia hometown, where confederate leaders of the Civil War were also once displayed, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
LYNNE WALSH tells the story of the extraordinary race against time to ensure London’s memorial to the International Brigades got built – as activists gather next week to celebrate the monument’s 40th anniversary


