title: The Last Man Alive by: Neill, Alexander Sutherland published: 1938 read: 2023-09 preview

First published in 1938, this book is the writeup of a story that A. S. Neill (1883–1973), founder and headmaster of Summerhill school in England, he “told to the pupils of my school, children from eight to twelve”.

The book starts like this:

This present story arose out of a Sunday-night conversation. _
_“I’ve got no idea for a story to-night”, I said. “My imagination has run dry”.
“Can’t you tell us another story about Pyecraft the millionaire, like you did in A Dominie’s Five” asked Betty.
“I’ve got an idea”, said Michael. “Let us be the last people alive. Everybody dies except ourselves.”
“And we live among a lot of rotting corpses”, said David scornfully; “no thanks.”
“We could bury them”, suggested Jean.
“It would take a bit of collecting”, I remarked, “to get rid of forty-two million dead British.”
Evelyn sighed.
“Then we simply couldn’t be the last people alive”, she said. “I’d hate gathering corpses.”
I suddenly had an idea.
“We don’t need to have corpses”, I said. “I’ll tell you the story of The Last Man Alive.”

And so the story starts, on how a green cloud visits the earth and petrifies everyone. Everyone? Well, almost everyone, and Neill, Pyecraft and a number of children survive as they happen to fly in Pyecraft’s airship (Zeppelin) when the cloud circles the earth.

And so they come down, as the last people alive. The last? Well, almost. While the first chapters describe the fun and despair they have, as the story progresses they encounter pockets of people here and there, and have good and bad experiences with those. Up to… the last man alive.

Each chapter is concluded with a discussion of that chapter, where the children criticise (mostly) or praise (rarely) the story that Neill tells them. Thus making it a lively, interactive happening.

The book is wonderfully topical, too, living in the days just before the second world war started for Britain; and when Bolshevism was en vogue¹.

Story telling at its best. I never understood why this book received so little attention. I read it, as a teenager, in a translated version, and since I could no longer get my hands on it, I re-translated it myself, for the younger under us who are not fluent in English.

The original is, of course, much better. And you can go and read it at https://thelastmanalive.tripod.com/. Please do so.

1. Just to explain: Marxism provides the foundational theory that all these movements draw upon; communism is the broader ideological goal that Marxism envisions; Bolshevism is a specific interpretation of Marxism, adapted by Lenin for the Russian context, and it led to the establishment of the Soviet Union, and Trotskyism is a variant of Marxism that emerged in opposition to Stalin’s policies, advocating for continuous revolution and internationalism. There are more isms, but let’s leave it at that, as its relevance is only to explain some of the political interpretations the book may or may not have. No, it’s not a communist Bolshevist book! ↩