Geoff Andrews

Geoff Andrews is Senior Lecturer in Politics at The Open University. His new book, Shadow Man: James Klugmann, the Cambridge Spies and the Cold War, will be published by I.B.Tauris in 2015.

Eric Hobsbawm and MI5

He was an increasingly isolated figure, regarded at the time with a contempt and hostility from some Party apparatchiks that exceeded even MI5 denunciations.

By Geoff Andrews

/ 20 Nov 2014

The art of dissent: twenty years of philosophy football

For the last twenty years I have been organising Philosophy Football FC, a team which started with eleven ideologically sound players who had trouble defending inswinging corners.

By Geoff Andrews

/ 12 Oct 2014

The art of dissent: twenty years of philosophy football

For the last twenty years I have been organising Philosophy Football FC, a team which started with eleven ideologically sound players who had trouble defending inswinging corners.

By Geoff Andrews

/ 12 Oct 2014

Berlusconi's shadow: hope to fear

Silvio Berlusconi has survived ejection and scandal to return to the centre of Italian politics. But it is his opponents more than the man himself who carry the blame for his continuing influence, says Geoff Andrews.

By Geoff Andrews

/ 6 Feb 2013

Berlusconi's last stand

Italy's great survivor wants to become prime minister for the fourth time. The decision opens an intense electoral contest over the country's direction, says Geoff Andrews.

By Geoff Andrews

/ 10 Dec 2012

Hobsbawm’s legacy for Labour

Despite all the compliments, we are entitled to ask: what has Britain’s current Labour Party really learned from Eric Hobsbawm?

By Geoff Andrews

/ 16 Oct 2012

Brave New World reimagined

Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel Brave New World (1931) is acquiring fresh meanings in another era of crisis and pacifying solutions, says Geoff Andrews.

By Geoff Andrews

/ 16 Jul 2012

James Klugmann, a complex communist

An intellectual who spent his career inside Britain's communist party, and who was long regarded even by many of his comrades with a degree of pity, may seem an unlikely candidate for reappraisal. But the life of James Klugmann, who was born on 27 February 1912, was also intertwined with some of t

By Geoff Andrews

/ 27 Feb 2012

Silvio Berlusconi's legacy

It is a month since Italy's long-term prime minister resigned. But his pervasive influence on Italy's public life and the infirmity of the country's political class mean that it is too early to call this the post-Berlusconi era, says Geoff Andrews.

By Geoff Andrews

/ 14 Dec 2011

August 1990: a very British coup

The slow implosion of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s was echoed in the internal divisions and crises that consumed its western associates. Indeed, the once influential Communist Party of Great Britain faced its own trauma exactly a year before the attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev. Geof

By Geoff Andrews

/ 5 Sep 2011

Italy beyond Berlusconi: the "normal" solution

Italy’s opposition has wounded Silvio Berlusconi. But it is still far from removing the prime minister - and even further from healing Italian democracy. Here, the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn offers important lessons, says Geoff Andrews.

By Geoff Andrews

/ 20 Jun 2011

The new food movement: politics and pleasure

The emergent movements around the politics of food are a vital component of debates on the planet’s future, says Geoff Andrews.

By Geoff Andrews

/ 4 Apr 2011