Mrs. Ratcliffe's Revolution

She left the land of Marks & Spencer and went to the land of Marx and Lenin. Between 1961 when the Iron Curtain descended and 1989 when the Berlin Wall was torn down, there were more than two million attempts to defect from East to West Germany. There is only one recorded instance of an attempt to defect the other way: Mrs. Ratcliffe's Revolution. When the leader of the Bingley Communist Party, membership 12, decides to live his dream in the Worker's Paradise, taking his wife and two daughters, his hopes of a great adventure are crushed by the reality of paranoia and bureaucratic oppression. Now, in this black comedy of failed idealism and of reawakening, one woman takes control of her life and restores balance to her distinctively dysfunctional family.