Ben Harker is Lecturer in English and Cultural Studies at the University of Salford.  His first book was Class Act: The Cultural and Political Life of Ewan MacColl (Pluto Press, 2007) and more recently he co-edited British Communism: A Documentary History (Manchester University Press, 2011).  His articles on culture and the Left in Britain have appeared in journals including History Workshop, ELH and Literature & History.  He’s an editor of Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism and is currently writing two books, one provisionally entitled The Cultural Formation of the English Popular Front and the other Cultural Communism.  While at the Beinecke he will be researching the records of the publishers Lawrence & Wishart.