Malcolm Hulke

Known as "Mac" throughout his life, Hulke was born out of wedlock in 1924 and never knew his father. He later discussed the social stigma of illegitimacy and his personal experiences of it in a 1964 radio documentary and a 1973 op-ed piece in The Observer. He lived with his mother, Marian, until her death in 1943 in Cumberland. In 1945 he was conscripted into the Royal Navy. Impressed by the Russian prisoners of War whom he met in Norway and by the Red Army's defeat of the Nazis on the Eastern Front, Hulke joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1945 and worked briefly as a typist in the party's headquarters. He left the party in 1951, objecting to the Soviet Union's hostility to Yugoslavia and its line on the Korean War, but soon re-joined, and appears to have remained a member of the party until the early 1960s. His politics remained firmly on the left, and this was reflected in his writings, which often explored anti-authoritarian, environmental, and humanist themes.