Anarchists In Love

'A marvellous and remarkable book.' Melvyn Bragg

'A life-affirming novel.'

Telegraph

First published in 1963,

Anarchists in Love was the first of a quartet of novels by Colin Spencer concerning the Simpson family. This volume centres on Sundy Simpson, who, on a warm May evening in Brighton, runs into Reg Pearson in a bar. They begin an affair: she paints, he writes, and on the surface they seem well matched. Reg, however, is a keeper of secrets.

In a new preface to this edition Colin Spencer recalls the controversy that attended its first publication, and his wish to celebrate Brighton, 'which appeared to me in my twenties to be as complicated as the human soul'.