The Spiral Ascent: A Trilogy

This book contains three works which were also published separately. Their titles are: 1) "In the Thirties"2) "The Rotten Elements,"and 3) "No Home but the Struggle"Edward Upward, who died in 2009 at the mighty age of 105, was a schoolfriend/collaborator of Isherwood whose communist beliefs, unashamedly embedded in his art, would always bar him from the mainstream literary establishment.The Spiral Ascent, a trilogy of which In the Thirties is the first volume, was a work of his maturity, appearing from 1962 to 1977. Effectively it is his second novel. More importantly, it is the ultimate rara avis of English literature, an overtly political novel about the groundroots of political activism. It is a thinly-fictionalised account of Upward's increasing involvement with the Communist Party of Great Britain whilst working as a master in a state school with pretensions (unnamed in the novel but in real life Alleyn's in Dulwich).