Alfred Sherman

Sir Alfred Sherman, KBE, (10 November 1919 – 26 August 2006) was a writer, journalist, and political analyst. Described by a long-time associate as "a brilliant polymath, a consummate homo politicus, and one of the last true witnesses to the 20th century", he was a Communist volunteer in the Spanish Civil War but later changed his views completely and became an adviser to Margaret Thatcher.

Personal life

Sherman was born in Hackney, London, to Jewish immigrants from Russia, Jacob Vladimir and Eva Sherman. His early years were spent in grinding poverty; as a child he suffered from rickets. He attended Hackney Downs County Secondary School, which was then a grammar school and regarded as a flagship of opportunity. He went on to Chelsea Polytechnic, where he studied science. He married Zahava Zazi née Levin in 1958, and they had one son, Gideon. After her death from cancer in 1993 he married Lady Angela Sherman in 2001.

Young communist

Alfred Sherman joined the Communist Party as a teenager and abandoned his studies at Chelsea Polytechnic at the age of 17, later explaining, "to be a Jew in 1930s Britain was to be alienated. The world proletariat offered us a home." He then volunteered to fight for the Major Attlee Battalion of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, 1937–38, where he was taken prisoner and repatriated to Britain. After returning home, he worked in a London electrical factory.