Contributor(s): David Aaronovitch | David Aaronovitch talks to Charlie Beckett about his new book Party Animals: My Family and Other Communists. A memoir of early life among communists, Party Animals first took David Aaronovitch back through his own memories of belief and action. But there was much more to it. He found himself studying the old secret service files, uncovering the unspoken shame and fears that provided the unconscious background to his own existence as a party animal. Only then did he begin to understand what had come before – both the obstinate heroism and the monstrous cowardice. And the elements that shape our fondest beliefs. David Aaronovitch (@DAaronovitch) is an award-winning journalist, who has worked in radio, television and newspapers in the United Kingdom since the early 1980s. His first book, Paddling to Jerusalem, won the Madoc prize for travel literature in 2001 and his second, Voodoo Histories, was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller. Charlie Beckett (@CharlieBeckett) is Director of Polis. Polis (@PolisLSE) is the LSE's journalism and society think-tank, a part of the Department of Media and Communications aimed at working journalists, media practitioners, people in public life and students in the UK and around the world.