and abortion that "alienated readers on the left and horrified those on the political right." In 2005, files from the National Archives revealed that the British government had considered prosecuting the publishers of We Have Been Warned, but ultimately decided not to do so. Mitchison was a compulsive writer, as her travelogues revealed. She wrote on planes or in trains as prompted by the situation. For example, she wrote up a visit to the US in the 1930s, objecting to sharecropping. Her 1938 book The Moral Basis of Politics was a treatise on ethics and politics that she had worked on for three years. In it she defended the right of the left-wing journalist H. N. Brailsford to criticise the Moscow Trials, which had caused controversy on the British left at the time. Mitchison's The Blood of the Martyrs (1939) is set against the background of Nero's persecution of the Christians. She draws parallels between Nero and dictators of her own time, Mussolini and Hitler. In 1952, Mitchison went to Moscow as a member of the Authors' World Peace Appeal. She frequently visited Africa, especially Botswana, where she was made a sort of tribal mother (Mmarona) to the baKgatla people. Mucking Around (1981) best describes her haphazard travels in five continents over 50 years. Later works included further historical novels: The Bull Calves (1947) about the Jacobite rising of 1745 and The Young Alexander the Great (1960). She also turned to fantasy, such as Graeme and the Dragon (1954, Graeme Mitchison being a grandson through Denis), science fiction such as Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962) and Solution Three (1975), fantasy such as the humorous Arthurian novel To the Chapel Perilous (1955), non-fiction such as African Heroes (1968), and also children's novels, poetry, travel and a three-volume autobiography. She was unsure exactly how many books she had written, often claiming there were about 70. The articles were uncountable, from book reviews for the old Time and Tide magazine and the New Statesman to practical essays on farming, campaigning articles, recollections and reflections. After her husband's death, Mitchison wrote several memoirs, published as separate titles between 1973 and 1985. She was also a good friend of the writer J. R. R. Tolkien, and one of the proof readers of The Lord of the Rings. Maxim Lieber served as her literary editor in 1935. Activism Mitchison, like her brother, was a committed socialist