David Goodway

David Goodway is a British social and cultural historian who for twenty years has written principally on anarchism and libertarian socialism. He is the editor of two volumes of Nicholas Walter’s work— The Anarchist Past and PM Press’s Damed Fools in Utopia: And Other Writings on Anarchism and War Resistance — The Letters of John Cowper Powys and Emma Goldman and collections of the writings of Alex Comfort, Herbert Read, and Maurice Brinton. His conversations with Colin Ward have been published as Talking Anarchy. 

Books by David

Introductions by David

• Book events
• Reviews
• More about David

Praise

Praise

“It is difficult to match the empirical strength, the lucidity of prose, and the integration of theory and practical insight in the magnificent body of work produced by the veteran anarchist Colin Ward.”
—Prospect

“Colin Ward has never written a highly paid column for a national newspaper or been on the bestseller lists, but his fan club is distinguished, and his influence wider than he himself may know.”
—Times Literary Supplement

---

Praise

“Anarchist Seeds beneath the Snow is an impressive achievement for its rigorous scholarship across a wide range of sources, for collating this diverse material in a cogent and systematic narrative-cum-argument, and for elucidating it with clarity and flair… It is a book that needed to be written and now deserves to be read.”  —Journal of William Morris Studies

“Goodway outlines with admirable clarity the many variations in anarchist thought. By extending outwards to left-libertarians he takes on even greater diversity.”  —Sheila Rowbotham, Red Pepper

“A splendid survey of ‘left-libertarian thought’ in this country, it has given me hours of delight and interest. Though it is very learned, it isn’t dry. Goodway’s friends in the awkward squad (especially William Blake) are both stimulating and comforting companions in today’s political climate.”  —A.N. Wilson, Daily Telegraph

“The history of the British anarchist movement has been little studied or appreciated outside of the movement itself. Anarchist Seeds beneath the Snow, should go a long way towards rectifying this blind spot in established labour and political history. His broad ranging erudition combined with a penetrating understanding of the subject matter has produced a fascinating, highly readable history.”  —Joey Cain, edwardcarpenterforum.org

---

Praise

“[Nicolas Walter was] one of the most interesting left intellectuals of the second half of the twentieth century in Britain.”
–Professor Richard Taylor, University of Cambridge

“David Goodway has done his usual excellent job of selecting an interesting and varied collection [and] contributed a most useful and informative introduction…”
–Richard Alexander, Freedom on The Anarchist Past

---

Introductions by David

Praise

“The revolution that accompanied the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War was a high point in the history of working-class creativity, internationalism and self-activity. If it is to be a resource for present and future struggles, we must assess the strengths and weaknesses of the movement that propelled it. In this regard, the early endeavours of Vernon Richards remain indispensable.”
—Danny Evans, author of Revolution and the State: Anarchism in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939

“Vernon Richards’s Lessons of the Spanish Revolution is an excellent critical anarchist work on the revolution and the role of the anarchists.”
—Iain McKay, editor of Direct Struggle Against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology

“Lessons of the Spanish Revolution explores the deeply complex subject of the Spanish workers’ heroic struggle against Franco’s regime exceptionally well. One of the key strengths of the book can be seen in the way Richards unflinchingly lays bare a clutch of deeply sobering truths, particularly through demonstrating how a number of disastrous tactics pursued by Spanish anarchists and syndicalists directly contributed to the defeat of the revolutionary movement.”
—Richard J. White, coeditor of The Practice of Freedom: Anarchism, Geography, and the Spirit of Revolt

---

Book Events

---

Reviews

• Lessons of the Spanish Revolution— on CounterPunch
• Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow in a Center for a Stateless Society
• Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: A Review
• Talking Anarchy in Ojai Orange
• Talking Anarchy: A Review
• Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: A Publishers Weekly Review
• Anarchy for Everyone on the PowellsBooks

---

Interviews

---

Mentions

---

Blog