The Night-Soil Men

Book of the Day: New Statesman

Broady's major work of fiction, nearly a decade in the writing, explores the origins and development of the Independent Labour Party – the working-class political movement founded in Bradford in 1893. Detailing the exploits, fortunes, and relationships of three central characters: passionate Fred Jowett, ruthless Philip Snowden (later, the Labour Party's first chancellor), and the licentious and unforgettable Victor Grayson.

Spanning four decades, the novel covers the socialist foment and activism of fin-de-siècle Britain, the impact of the First World War and the changing landscape of the interwar years, as social change points forward to a new politics and the reinvention of Britain, despite fierce resistance from the establishment and its allies. And all punctuated with sex, comrades, hustings, art, dialect and copious points of order.

With cameos of every leading socialist of the age, this sweeping generational tale is thrilling, revolutionary, ribald and laugh-out-loud funny.