This book, by a former journalist on the British Communist Daily Worker newspaper, chronicles her increasing disillusionment with both Soviet Communism and the Stalinist leadership of the Communist Party of Great Britain, after both Khrushchov's secret speech denouncing Stalin's crimes and the Soviet invasion of Hungary, which seemed to give the lie to the view that the Soviet Union had fundamentally changed under the post-Stalin leadership. The shock of the revelations on her and her comrades is well described and illustrates the capacity of many people for self-delusion, deceiving themselves into believing or blocking out the existence of events or developments depending on whether or not these fit into their world view. This phenomenon, and the associated cognitive dissonance, which can amount to a personal trauma, obviously has much wider applications than those described in this book, though it is particularly acute here, given the knowledge of the atrocities committed under Stalin's rule and the contrast with the naive view held by many that he was the saviour of the international working class. The story is excitingly told and by no means a dull political memoir. ( )