Family background: Czarist Russia to London's East End. North London childhood; wartime evacuation. Orthodox Jewish upbringing. Introduction to anti-semitism. Up to Hampstead. Boarding school at Cheltenham. Family bankruptcy. Apprenticeship in London, Paris, Leipzig. Intellectual growth aided by Bernard Shaw. Flirtation with Zionism en route to atheism.
Apprenticeship to raw fur business; pushing trolleys of skunk skins around the sidewalks of New York. Driven from skunk skins to scholarship by Wall Street crash. A working student at Columbia University. Political awakening in Kentucky by coal-miners' strike. Revolt on the campus.
Joining the British Communist Party and the International Brigade. Military training in a Spanish village. Wounded at the Battle of Jarama. Hospitalization in besieged Madrid. My first Canadian love. Recruitment by KGB for anti-Trotskyist espionage. Transfer by KGB from International Brigade to Barcelona street fighting.
Posing as journalist and spying on anti-Stalinists in Barcelona, including George Orwell. Transferred by KGB to Shanghai. Posing as mission university while spying on Trotskyists. Loyalty to Stalin weakened by Trotskyists. Thrown overboard by KGB. Leaving Shanghai for west China via Viet Nam. My second Canadian love - my wife.
Last minute escape from Shanghai. At Pearl Harbor after the bombing. Back in U.S.A. en route for U.K. Working as a Seaman in oil tanker convoy across Atlantic. Wartime marriage in London. Volunteering for R.A.F. Training for anti-Japanese intelligence.
An officer's life of luxury and other ranks' slum life on troopship. In India: secret contact with Indian Communist Party. Friction with British Army in India. Intelligence duties and voluntary overtime work as Education and Welfare Officer.
Activity in democratic upsurge in British forces in Ceylon, Burma, Singapore. Contact with local communists. Removal from intelligence after Soviet communications became its focus. Back to Britain, reunion with wife and with British Communist Party. Demobilization. Courted by Sir Stafford Cripps as possible Foreign Office China expert.
Studying village life and land reform under primitive conditions. Gathering material for two books published in U.K. and U.S.A. (Routledge and Pantheon).
Guerrilla teaching. Teaching in newly liberated Beijing. Academic struggles. Learning from Soviet experience. Participation in political movements to reform ideology. Siding with China against the Soviet Union. Turning down British University (Leeds) job offer to stay in China.
Leaving China for first time in 10 years. In a small Canadian town with 3 Chinese-speaking children. Culture shock. Suspicion of conservative locals. Propaganda for friendship with China in aftermath of Korean war and Hungary 1956. On to England facing similar situation. Visiting Soviet Union en route for China. Initial disillusionment with "Workers' Fatherland".
Plunging into cultural revolution. Denounced, arrested, imprisoned in solitary in top security gaol. Release and rehabilitation. Proclaimed innocent by Premier Zhou En-lai. Return to academia.
Getting to know our grown-up sons before they leave China. Why I did not leave with them. Making a Chinese-English dictionary. Teaching and dictionary-making "beyond the gates". Mourning Mao Ze-dong and Zhou En-lai. Surviving two earthquakes. Teaching World History from an unpopular standpoint. Crossing academic swords. Down-playing Deng Xiao-ping and confronting Zhao Zi-yang over a barricade of potted plants.
Upholding Maoism in U.S.A. and Canada. Nostalgic trips: to Greece recalling college days; to Spain re-visiting scenes of fighting and spying; reunion with a Spanish girl friend. Teaching and touring in Mongolia and China's Far West. An anti-Zionist atheist Jew in Israel. To Tibet by public bus. Conversing with lamas and Western China haters.
A blast at China's Soviet style journalism. Letters on: mixed marriages; bicycles versus auto-culture; against smoking and boxing; against racism in the media and humiliating prisoners in the dock. Letters to the foreign press: Daily Telegraph, New York Times etc.
Ethnicity and Identity; remorse over concealing being Jewish; growing horror at holocaust; continued rejection of religion and Zionism. Increasing support for Women's Liberation, Gay Liberation. Thought liberation from blind support for dogmatic Marxism-Maoism.
Public support for democratic movement against corruption, nepotism, repression. Fortuitous departure from China on eve of massacre for long-planned home leave. No public statements abroad but protest back in China and boycott of government functions. Continued support for and close links with Chinese people.
