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with the Soviet Union and an early second front, public ownership as the basis of a socialist transformation, a welfare state, and a free and open society. Foot was excited by the nature of Bevan’s socialism, with its background in south Wales syndicalism and ideas of industrial democracy as opposed to bureaucratic statism. He admired his libertarian Marxism, his natural use of language, his open-mindedness towards other cultures, his brilliance as an orator both on the stump and increasingly in the Commons.

      Most of all, he admired his style. Bevan was a vivid, colourful man, with a love of painting and literature; he was captivated by a book like Stendhal’s Le Rouge et le noir. He shared with Foot a liking for the more exotic versions of liberal philosophy, notably the works of the Uruguayan author José Rodo. He had a genuine love of complex ideological debate, attacking the enemy’s argument at its strongest point. Also, in Foot’s brilliant phrase, he was ‘a sensual puritan’, with a shared love of Venice and an attraction to women that went far beyond his own beguiling but wayward wife. He dressed well, he liked to dine well at the Café Royal, he enjoyed wine, especially Italian. He far transcended the other, more staid Welsh MPs dining on the ‘Welsh table’ in the Commons: Jim Callaghan would say Nye would only join them for a meal when he was in political trouble.²⁹ Bevan straddled the worlds of politics, the arts and journalism. His associates ranged from Koestler to Brendan Bracken, who provoked him by calling him a ‘lounge lizard, a Bollinger Bolshevik’. Bevan was a captivating figure. If often difficult and egotistic, he was also perhaps the most original and visionary politician ever produced by the British working-class movement. In addition he had a range of skills that left his people the National Health Service, Britain’s greatest contribution to civilization in the twentieth century. He proved himself an artist in the uses of power. He loved Michael for his literacy, his integrity and his courage, his love of the romantics. Bevan liked to declaim aloud the poetry of Keats and Wordsworth, and was another enthusiast for Wells, though he could never quite fathom Foot’s regard for Swift. Bevan’s Why Not Trust the Tories?, a brilliant philippic published in 1944, showed a heavy influence from Foot, not least the famous peroration citing Rainboro of the Levellers in the Putney debates. To Foot, nothing more confirmed his low opinion of Attlee and his near-hatred of Gaitskell than what he felt was their conspiracy to remove Nye in 1951. For Bevan represented everything he felt was most worthwhile in this world: ‘More than any other in his age he kept alive the idea of democratic socialism,’ and gave it a vibrant and audacious quality.³⁰ Foot’s own equally audacious biography was to provide him with the most glittering of memorials after he was gone.

      After leaving Express Newspapers, Foot needed employment. In fact it had already been guaranteed. In the summer of 1944 he became a regular columnist for the Daily Herald, a post which he retained until 1963. He had not had much regard for the paper in recent years, after its brilliant beginning in the Lansbury years after 1913. It was taken over in 1929 by Lord Southwood, owner of Odhams Press, ‘a small-minded man interested only in profits’, in Foot’s view, and ‘an absurd figure to be in charge of a Labour paper’.³¹ However, Foot did have an immense regard for the Herald’s editor, Percy Cudlipp, a native of Cardiff Like Foot he had been a very youthful editor of the Evening Standard; indeed, he was appointed by Beaverbrook at the even younger age of twenty-seven. Along with his brother Hugh of the Daily Mirror, Percy transformed the popular left-wing press: ‘He could do anything on a newspaper. He could take anybody’s copy and make it better.’ In later life Foot declared that Cudlipp was ‘the greatest of all the popular editors’.³² He was also an autodidact, a man of considerable culture, with a love of music, a flair for light verse and a close friendship with John Betjeman. Cudlipp had long been angling for Foot’s services, and he moved to the Herald immediately on leaving the Standard. He would write two columns a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, for less remuneration than on the Standard, but with more scope to do other things, including write for Tribune. Cudlipp would prove to be a stout defender of him when he later got into trouble with Transport House.

      The newspaper introduced Foot as ‘the brilliant young left-wing author and journalist’, and his first column appeared on 15 August 1944. After an initial appeal to idealism, it dealt with the congenial theme of the need to avoid any secret treaties that might pervert a post-war settlement. His columns gave Foot ample scope to cover a vast swathe of topics, mostly international, succinctly and even violently, with ample use of historical analogy and literary quotation. On 25 August he hailed the liberation of Paris, with much citation of Fox, Tom Paine, Hazlitt, Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron and others from his Valhalla of heroes. He took time out on 15 September to rebut Bernard Shaw’s characteristically perverse clarion call against all political parties, and advised him to look at the reconstruction needs in Plymouth which the Tory caucus was trying to wreck. Two weeks later came the cry that ‘only the international faith of Socialism can win the final triumph – Shout it from the housetops!’ There followed a lengthy series of familiar assaults on individual Tories, ‘guilty men’ one and all – Leslie Burgin, W. S. Morrison, Lord Woolton, Lord Linlithgow (the Viceroy who had imprisoned Nehru), Lord Croft. There is on 5 December a good Labour kick at the Liberal William Beveridge for wanting industry to remain in private hands and opposing redistributive taxation: ‘He travels on the Queen Mary yet believes he is Columbus!’ Over the new year he is denouncing the ‘tragedy’ of Britain’s intervention in Greece, though also challenging far-left critics by condemning Russian involvement through the Lublin government in Poland: ‘Will the Poles have liberty?’ On 20 March 1945 he is drenching with ridicule the hapless National Liberals like Ernest Brown. The opportunity is predictably seized to stick more darts into the Member for Devonport, Leslie Hore-Belisha, ‘a lonely giant’ who not only received a medal from Mussolini but also voted to remove Churchill from office in 1942, while Rommel was close to Alexandria. On 5 April there is a moving tribute to a genuine Liberal, David Lloyd George, whose great life had come to an end, but whose career was marked by tragedy because he had been compelled to govern with the Tories (this, of course, at a time when Labour ministers were still entrenched in Churchill’s coalition). It is lively, knockabout stuff, but fierce, even vicious, with skilful one-sided argument and a populist approach for the voting public.

      But his most serious enterprise was becoming an MP, and Plymouth therefore called him more and more. A seat Labour had never looked like winning, Devonport was located in a part of Britain in which, as Andrew Thorpe has shown, Labour was traditionally very weak. It was clearly going to be a tough contest. Isaac had anticipated this with some relish: ‘You didn’t commit yourself to a clean fight, I hope?’³³ Early on, Foot was challenged at meetings there in 1944 about his not doing military service, and had to explain his medical circumstances, the asthma which led to his being given Grade IV. He insisted he had not been a conscientious objector. He was also interrogated about having worked for the right-wing Beaverbrook press. The Standard was a very good paper under his editorship, he said: ‘He had left of his own free will because someone was trying to interfere with his rights as to what he wanted to write in that newspaper.’³⁴ Needlessly, he threw back provocations of his own, including much personal insult (never anti-Semitic) of Hore-Belisha.

      The Labour Party had made progress in Plymouth since the early 1930s. The council had a Labour majority, and Foot was later to pay tribute to some of the key local personalities, Harry Mason (the council leader), Harry Wright (its finance officer) and Bert Medland, one of the MPs elected in 1945, and later to serve as Foot’s election adviser in 1950.³⁵ But it was still going to be a very tough contest in a city that had undergone tough experiences. Plymouth, a place with much ancient slum housing, had also been a significant victim of the blitz, as was the fate of all seaports and naval centres. On 20–21 March 1941 there was heavy bombing by Heinkels, as it happened while George VI and Queen Elizabeth were visiting the naval barracks and dockyards. The centre of the city was set ablaze, leaving 292 civilians dead. Worse was to follow on 21–23 and 28–29 April, when

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