6 DECEMBER 1968, Page 19

Shorter notice

Truth Will Prevail Marian Slingova (Merlin 21s). The author, though English by birth, was Czechoslovakian by marriage to Otto Sling —victim of the notorious show trial of 1952 to which he gave his name. Mrs Slingova was imprisoned, 'brainwashed' and appallingly mis- treated: her husband executed. Incredibly, it wasn't until 1956 and Khrushchev's revela- tions about Stalinist publicity methods that she began to understand the full horror of what she had so discreetly suffered. Writing during the Soviet invasion of Prague last August, still a passionate communist, Marian Slingova's spare, uncompromising narrative is a sickening reminder of things as they were —and of how, once again, they might become.