A new and radically different biography of the Australian-bornarchaeologist and prehistorian, Vere Gordon Childe (1892-1957). In his earlylife he was active in the Australian labour movement and wrote How LabourGoverns (1923), the world's first study of parliamentarysocialism. At the end of the First World War he decided to pursue a life ofscholarship to 'escape the fatal lure' of politics and Australian labour's'politicalism', his term for its misguided emphasis on parliamentaryrepresentation. 

In Britain, with the publication of The Dawn ofEuropean Civilisation (1925) he began a career that wouldestablish him as preeminent in his field and one of the most distinguishedscholars of the mid-twentieth century. At the same time, his aim was to'democratise archaeology', to involve people in its practice and to reveal tothem WhatHappened in History (1942), the title of his most popularbook. It sold 300,00 copies in its first 15 years. 

Politics continued to lure him, and for forty years the securityservices of Britain and Australia continued to spy on him. He supportedRussia's 'grand and hopeful experiment' and opposed the rise of fascism. HisAustralian background reinforced his hatred of colonialism and imperialism.Politics was also implicated in his death. There is a direct line betweenChilde's early radicalism and his final - and fatal - political act in the BlueMountains west of Sydney. This is a book about the central place of socialistpolitics in his life, and his contribution to the theory of history that thispolitics entailed.