The Chronology of Revolution is a fresh, outward-facing history of the Communist Party of Great Britain with a compelling lesson for today’s socialist activists.

Ben Harker is a senior lecturer in twentieth-century literature at the University of Manchester.

"This is a significant study, and one that should be read by all those with an interest in either the history British Communism, or the future direction of the political left."

Lawrence Parker:

"Ben Harker has produced a well-researched and engaging account of the history of the Communist Party of Great Britain, seen through the lens of the party’s cultural activity and the ideas that informed its work in this arena. The book is beautifully produced."

Elke Weesjes, The City University of New York:

"Harker’s book is a clever interplay between culture and politics and relevant to those who study the communist movement in the developed West, as well as those who are pondering questions related to the future of the left in the twenty-first century."

John Green:

"Harker takes us back to a time where it was possible to imagine a different world. Critically sharp, yet avowedly recuperative, he asks us to think again about the enabling agency of the party."

Tyrus Miller, University of California, Irvine:

"The Chronology of Revolution highlights the evolving tensions between the cultural creativity that took place under the umbrella of the Communist Party of Great Britain and the party’s consistent inability to acknowledge and productively incorporate these countercurrents. Not only does Ben Harker offer a superbly researched and documented account of the whole span of the CPGB’s history, he also unearths a counterfactual set of directions that the party might have pursued, suggestively sketching an alternative history that remained sadly unrealized."

Geoff Eley, University of Michigan:

"Sympathetically, knowledgably, clearheadedly – Ben Harker guides us through the vanished world of British Communism, where it was once possible to imagine a world differently ordered from now. Critically astute, yet avowedly recuperative, he asks us to think again about the enabling agency of the party, the shifting boundaries of the political, and the salience of cultural politics in an early twenty-first-century capitalist society."