A Radical Romance

A luminous memoir of love and grief from the author of Common People

First U.S. Edition



Alison Light met the radical social historian, Raphael Samuel, in London in 1986. Twenty years her senior, Raphael was a charismatic figure on the British Left, utterly driven by his work and by a commitment to collective politics. Within a year they were married. Within ten, Raphael would pass away.

Theirs was an attraction of opposites- he from a Jewish Communist family with its roots in Russia and Eastern Europe, she from the English working class. In this chronicle of a passionate marriage, Alison Light peels back the layers of their time together, its intimacies and its estrangements.



"...more than just some summing-up: it is a work of art." -GUARDIAN



"Remarkable, moving, illuminating. A memoir of cauterizing honesty. This is a book that deserves to be widely read."

-MARK BOSTRIDGE, SPECTATOR



"An inspiring account of ... deep love..." -TLS



"Beautifully crafted...it casts a light on the lightness of love and the profound depression of loss. A truly gifted writer." -HERALD



"The portrait of Spitalfields is superb, and so is the account of Raphael's astonishing mother Minna."

-MARGARET DRABBLE, TLS, BOOK OF THE YEAR



"Compulsively readable. Light is a shrewd narrator...She reflects with careful psychological and philosophical insight on the reality of loneliness and profound loss following ten years of marriage...Light is also a poet and it shows in certain suppositions and propositions..." -RTE