Books, Arts & Manners: Communists and Lovers

Paul Robeson: A Biography, by Martin Bauml Duberman (Knopf, 804 pp., $24.95)

What sort of Communist was Paul Robeson? Well, he once had a passionate affair with a more-or-less upper-class English actress. When she made amorous advances to him in the back seat of a limousine, he was embarrassed at the presence of the chauffeur; she mocked his concern. Her contempt for the chauffeur alienated Robeson, by reminding him of the way Negroes had been treated in the South. He went back to his wife.

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Joseph Sobran

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Paul Robeson: A Biography, by Martin Bauml Duberman (Knopf, 804 pp., $24.95)

What sort of Communist was Paul Robeson? Well, he once had a passionate affair with a more-or-less upper-class English actress. When she made amorous advances to him in the back seat of a limousine, he was embarrassed at the presence of the chauffeur; she mocked his concern. Her contempt for the chauffeur alienated Robeson, by reminding him of the way Negroes had been treated in the South. He went back to his wife.