The task of a biographer dealing with a subject whose life spanned ninety-nine years, during which he became a leading figure in two countries, is difficult indeed. But what is he to make of a man who, though vigorously anti-communist, opposed the banning of the Party, never drank but opposed prohibition, condemned the atomic bomb as indefensible and immoral, spoke against the death penalty and flogging as early as 1924, berated Britain and its politicians but upheld loyalty to the Crown, lived in luxurious surroundings but fainted from malnutrition during the Depression? It was scarcely unfair for his biographer to assert that Frank Hardy and the A.B.C. maligned Mannix.