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A facinating and often moving book. I shed tears at the description of Ewan's final words ... Class Act explores the complexity of its subject in intimate detail. Having read it, I feel I understand Ewan better. I also know more about what he created, and why and when [thanks] to this engrossing volume. --Sandra Kerr, English Dance and Song, Spring 2008.
Product Description
--- First biography of the political activist and acclaimed musician --
Sometimes described as ‘the British Brecht’, Ewan MacColl (1915-1989) was a major twentieth-century political artist. He became a communist at fourteen and spent six decades at the cultural forefront of numerous political struggles, producing plays, songs and radio programmes on subjects ranging from the Spanish Civil War to the Poll Tax. A founder-member of Theatre Workshop, MacColl was the acclaimed company's resident dramatist, and his plays won the admiration of contemporaries including George Bernard Shaw, Sean O'Casey and Hugh MacDiarmid. He went on to become the principal creative force behind the award-winning Radio Ballads and a leading figure in the post-war British folk revival. Best known as a singer and songwriter, MacColl standards such as ‘Dirty Old Town’ and ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ have been covered by artists from Roberta Flack to Johhny Cash and The Pogues.
This is the first biography of MacColl, and was prepared with the authorisation of his collaborator and widow, Peggy Seeger. Drawing on extensive research, Class Act: The Cultural and Political Life of Ewan MacColl is a freshly conceived and energetically written account of a highly creative and controversial activist.
Sometimes described as ‘the British Brecht’, Ewan MacColl (1915-1989) was a major twentieth-century political artist. He became a communist at fourteen and spent six decades at the cultural forefront of numerous political struggles, producing plays, songs and radio programmes on subjects ranging from the Spanish Civil War to the Poll Tax. A founder-member of Theatre Workshop, MacColl was the acclaimed company's resident dramatist, and his plays won the admiration of contemporaries including George Bernard Shaw, Sean O'Casey and Hugh MacDiarmid. He went on to become the principal creative force behind the award-winning Radio Ballads and a leading figure in the post-war British folk revival. Best known as a singer and songwriter, MacColl standards such as ‘Dirty Old Town’ and ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ have been covered by artists from Roberta Flack to Johhny Cash and The Pogues.
This is the first biography of MacColl, and was prepared with the authorisation of his collaborator and widow, Peggy Seeger. Drawing on extensive research, Class Act: The Cultural and Political Life of Ewan MacColl is a freshly conceived and energetically written account of a highly creative and controversial activist.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The first full length biography of Ewan MacColl is to be welcomed and will hopefully be widely read. There is a tendency is some quarters nowadays to denigrate MacColl and there is plenty of fuel for such criticism in Ben Harker's biography. Though prepared with the co-operation of MacColl's family it is no hagiography but an impressively researched and balanced work. It offers no epilogue or final assessment of MacColl's life or worth. It leaves the reader to weigh up the evidence presented over 300 pages of text and notes. It is the right approach.
I found this a tantalising work and a roller coaster of a read. MacColl has been an inspiration since the late 1950s both from record and live performance. However, Harker provides much more about him: the bitter, uncompromising, authoritarian and blinkered MacColl; the first class pain in the butt MacColl; the steely opponent of dictatorship and oppression but the apologist for some such regimes. During the early chapters I found myself playing MacColl's recordings just to reassure myself of the humanitarian MacColl who so often moved me. However, there is also much in those chapters to explain the flaws in MacColl's character, particularly the bitterness caused by unemployment and `the stoop of defeat' of his workless and blacklisted father (p.10). The shame and humiliations felt in his youth fed both his fierce commitments and contradictions later in life e.g. private education for his children.
The biography is thus a roller coaster because it drew so many different moods from this reader as it developed. It was impossible to put down. By the end it was a strangely moving account of MacColl's life from the `Red Haze' years to the disappointments and depression of his twilight years. It is impossible not to be moved by MacColl's own despairing later admission of his faults and mistakes to Charles Parker (p.212). He had indeed many frailties but like many of us, perhaps a more human MacColl emerges as a result.
But the real achievement of Harker's biography is that MacColl's strengths emerge more impressively that the disappointment of his frailties. He emerges as a truly working class inspiration: self-educated, driven, committed, immensely talented and creative. He never wavered from his central belief in the working class and its struggles. He may have had an idealised vision of that class, when reality was more complex and contradictory, but what vision is not opaque is some ways? Harker's biography shows that MacColl's commitment was both genuine and deep. Thanks to this book I know so much more about Ewan MacColl and in many ways have a better appreciation of his achievements, particularly in radical theatre. Yet, for me his body of song and narrative remains his crowning and lasting achievement.
I found this a tantalising work and a roller coaster of a read. MacColl has been an inspiration since the late 1950s both from record and live performance. However, Harker provides much more about him: the bitter, uncompromising, authoritarian and blinkered MacColl; the first class pain in the butt MacColl; the steely opponent of dictatorship and oppression but the apologist for some such regimes. During the early chapters I found myself playing MacColl's recordings just to reassure myself of the humanitarian MacColl who so often moved me. However, there is also much in those chapters to explain the flaws in MacColl's character, particularly the bitterness caused by unemployment and `the stoop of defeat' of his workless and blacklisted father (p.10). The shame and humiliations felt in his youth fed both his fierce commitments and contradictions later in life e.g. private education for his children.
The biography is thus a roller coaster because it drew so many different moods from this reader as it developed. It was impossible to put down. By the end it was a strangely moving account of MacColl's life from the `Red Haze' years to the disappointments and depression of his twilight years. It is impossible not to be moved by MacColl's own despairing later admission of his faults and mistakes to Charles Parker (p.212). He had indeed many frailties but like many of us, perhaps a more human MacColl emerges as a result.
But the real achievement of Harker's biography is that MacColl's strengths emerge more impressively that the disappointment of his frailties. He emerges as a truly working class inspiration: self-educated, driven, committed, immensely talented and creative. He never wavered from his central belief in the working class and its struggles. He may have had an idealised vision of that class, when reality was more complex and contradictory, but what vision is not opaque is some ways? Harker's biography shows that MacColl's commitment was both genuine and deep. Thanks to this book I know so much more about Ewan MacColl and in many ways have a better appreciation of his achievements, particularly in radical theatre. Yet, for me his body of song and narrative remains his crowning and lasting achievement.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Harker's book is very well written, detailed and with excellent notes for any one wanting to take their reading further. Many of the texts referenced can be tracked down. But despite it clearly being written by an academic it would be very readable for anyone with an interest in MacColl or any of the areas he worked in over the years. It answers the question a lot of people have speculated about over the years - what MacColl did in the war - and why he changed his name in exactly the way he did. Harker is symapthetic to MacColl, which is unusual these days, though it's no hagiography - he does make critical comments along the way.
I don't know if Ben Harker is related to Dave, but if you have ever struggled with the latter's books don't worry - the names may be the same but the writing is completely different.
I don't know if Ben Harker is related to Dave, but if you have ever struggled with the latter's books don't worry - the names may be the same but the writing is completely different.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is only the second book fully devoted to the life of Ewan MacColl-his autobiography 'Journeyman' was published in 1990 (He does of course appear frequently in Joan Littlewood's excellent autobiography)
Perhaps this lack of written material about MacColl's life partly explains why so many people know nothing, or very little, about him.A few 'old folkies' argue endlessly about his name change or why he sang with a 'finger in his ear',but there has been little serious appraisal of his considerable body of work in theatre,songwriting ,radio and song collecting;or his vital role in the British folk song 'revival'. This book goes some way to addressing this neglect.It covers the main events included in 'Journeyman'; but also includes a few areas that MacColl omitted or gave little detail about- such as the WW2 years and the break-up of the Critics Group.Although this is an 'authorised' biography,the author is not reluctant to be critical of MacColl where he thinks it necessary. An enjoyable and very well-researched first book by the Ben Harker.--ray spendley
Perhaps this lack of written material about MacColl's life partly explains why so many people know nothing, or very little, about him.A few 'old folkies' argue endlessly about his name change or why he sang with a 'finger in his ear',but there has been little serious appraisal of his considerable body of work in theatre,songwriting ,radio and song collecting;or his vital role in the British folk song 'revival'. This book goes some way to addressing this neglect.It covers the main events included in 'Journeyman'; but also includes a few areas that MacColl omitted or gave little detail about- such as the WW2 years and the break-up of the Critics Group.Although this is an 'authorised' biography,the author is not reluctant to be critical of MacColl where he thinks it necessary. An enjoyable and very well-researched first book by the Ben Harker.--ray spendley
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