About

Dr Philip Bounds is a historian, journalist and critic. He holds a PhD in Politics from the University of Wales and has worked as a lecturer at a number of universities. A few years ago he committed professional suicide by leaving his job at Swansea University after a row over a contract. Since then he has made a living as a freelance journalist and independent scholar.

Philip has specialised in the history of ideas. He is particularly interested in the intellectual history of the British left and in the efforts of British Marxists to write about literary and cultural themes. He has written well-received books on George Orwell, British Marxist literary criticism and the history of Media and Cultural Studies. His most recent book is a memoir of life on the British left entitled Notes from the End of History. Most reviewers have hailed it for its originality, literary brio and humour, though not everyone has been pleased about its lack of enthusiasm towards the USSR. Philip’s articles, reviews and essays have appeared in a range of journals and newspapers, including Critique, Socialist History, Socialism and Democracy, Nature, Society and Thought, Cultural Logic, The Individual, Key Words and George Orwell Studies.

Philip thinks of himself as a libertarian Marxist. His enduring belief is that individual liberty can only be achieved in a socialist society. He is almost as preoccupied with the work of John Stuart Mill as with the writings of Marx, Trotsky and Gramsci. This fact has not always gone down well with his friends on the left.