The hijacking of Karl Marx's true vision

Biography: Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion - A Life, Gareth Stedman Jones, Allen Lane, hdbk, 768 pages, €34.99

Shades of difference: Statues of Karl Marx in his hometown of vTrier, Germany

Rachel Holmes on a superb intellectual biography that sets the record straight.

How far was Karl Marx's theory responsible for what became "Marxism"? This has been the central inquiry of Gareth Stedman Jones's academic career for almost half a century, since his precocious days as a young editor of New Left Review.