IT’S taken 30 years to get there but finally, with a loud gasp, the organisers finally reached the finishing tape on Tuesday.
To applause from a small audience the editors of the full collected tomes of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels announced at Friends House in Euston that they had done it at last – they had finally published the last volume by the great 19th-century political double-act.
Among the audience there was the usual sprinkling of left academics and politicos at the celebratory meeting organised by Marx Memorial Library based in Clerkenwell.
But two people were singularly missing – foreign secretary Jack Straw and one of Tony Blair’s economic advisors, Lord John Eatwell.
Singling out the names of past lecturers on Marxism at the library, Mary Rosser said there were two – now leading lights in New Labour – who were unlikely to repeat their youthful indiscretions.
She meant Lord Eatwell and Jack Straw.
The famous historian Eric Hobsbawm, who lives in Hampstead, a key editor of the project, said that from its inception in 1975 it had been funded by the former Soviet Union. But sometimes Moscow officials had refused to approve those essays by Marx they disagreed with.
While translators toiled on the works and famous academics promoted the project, the efforts of one person should be remembered – Margaret Mynatt.
Mr Hobsbawm said Mynatt, a German refugee from the Nazis, worked hard behind the scenes to get the project off the ground.
Mynatt lived in Highgate before her death in the mid-1970s with Yvonne Kapp, who wrote a seminal biography of Karl Marx’s daughter, Eleanor.
After the meeting, I rushed out to the stall selling books in the foyer of the hall to see what the final precious volume looked like but, oh, what a disappointment! I was too late – the last one had been snapped up at, it seems, a bargain price of £45! But I didn’t mind too much because the subject – the last correspondence of Engels – wasn’t quite up my street.
“We had three on sale, and they just went quickly – and people paid cash for them,” said a surprised representative of the publisher Lawrence and Wishart.

Robert pays a visit to Joseph

Robert McNamara, left and Joseph Rotblatt

THE former US defence secretary Robert McNamara slipped into West Hampstead on Monday to see his old friend, 96 year-old Professor Joseph Rotblatt.

McNamara, now in his late 80s, was paying a ‘get well’ visit to Rotblatt who had been unable to share a platform with him at the Hay Festival on Sunday because of illness.
Both men, fervent opponents of the spread of nuclear weapons, had been booked for the Festival as star attractions. Rotblatt, who is a Freeman of the Borough, worked on the Alamo atom-bomb project in the US in the 1940s and gained world stature as a physicist.
But since the 1950s Rotblatt has inspired scientists to join him in opposition to nuclear proliferation. Age doesn’t stop him from working a five-day week for his cause. He regularly attends conferences, many overseas, to promote his cause.
When I rang Rotblatt’s home, his assistant told me:
“He had intended to travel by car to Hay, but his cold made it impossible.
“He’s getting over it slowly. But he and Mr McNamara have been friends for years, and the visit cheered him up.”

Gone are the days of warm wine and dry curly sangers

Glenda Jackson MP, left and the New Journal’s Clare Latimer

I WAS pleased to see our very own food writer Clare Latimer in action last Thursday, providing the spread for VIPs invited by Camden Council to celebrate the formal opening of Waterlow Park.
Ms Latimer used to cater for Number 10 in the days when the Tories seemed to have a permanent lease on the address.
But that didn’t stop her swapping pleasantries with Labour’s Glenda Jackson, the MP for Hampstead and Highgate. Also present were Highgate Society president Robin Fairlie and numerous council luminaries who tucked into a generous buffet that included satay chicken, exotic salads and elderflower wine.

Yet another silly headline for Bill

I WONDER what that great buccaneering journalist James Cameron would have made of the awards presented at City University on Tuesday evening.
Cameron, who lived in Belsize Park and died 20 years ago, was one of those rare journalists – he wrote the truth as he saw it and didn’t give a jot what his proprietor thought about it.
He covered the Korean war in the early 1950s, upset the powers at the Picture Post magazine and Daily Express, and found himself out of a job. He continued writing for the liberal daily, the News Chronicle, long defunct. John Pilger must have modelled himself on him.
I once saw him at work in a newsroom. Head down over the typewriter with a look of fierce concentration on him. Later, we met at his home off Eton Avenue and gossiped about mutual friends.
I guess he would have been pleased that his example of heroic journalism is held up at City University as an example for beginners in the trade.
Presented with awards for Outstanding Journalism were Victoria Brittain for her work with the Guantanamo detainees and Lindsey Hilsum of Channel 4.
God only knows what big travel writer Bill Bryson (pictured) felt like as the man asked to do the honours – and give the memorial lecture.
Bryson spoke about “dumbing down” in the media and then livened up the evening with a collection of silly headlines and article errors he and his father have collected.