Colin Sheridan: Unexpected Cold War era book shows little has changed

A few weeks ago, I got a book in the post with no explanation at all. It feels like one of the most civilised acts available to us, writes Colin Sheridan

The construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. During the Cold War, Soviet communism, meanwhile, attracted many serious intellectuals precisely because the failures of capitalism and empire seemed so glaring during the 1930s and 1940s.

There are books you buy because everybody else is reading them. There are others you inherit. If you’re anything like me, there’s a stack, left unread, on bedside lockers for a decade because you were in your 20s and trying to become a person.

And then there are books that arrive in the post with no explanation at all. A few weeks ago, a small parcel came through my letterbox. Thin enough that it bent slightly in the middle. No note. No card. No flourish.