Christopher Agamemnon Pallis (2 December 1923 – 10 March 2005) was an Anglo-Greekneurologist andlibertarian socialist intellectual. Under thepen namesMartin Grainger andMaurice Brinton, he wrote and translated for the British groupSolidarity from 1960 until the early 1980s. As a neurologist, he produced the accepted criteria forbrainstem death, and wrote the entry on death forEncyclopædia Britannica.[1]
Chris Pallis was born inBombay,British Raj, to a prominent Anglo-Greek family,[2] "of whose intellectual achievements he was always extremely proud".[3] The poetAlexandros Pallis was a great-uncle, and so the writersMarietta Pallis andMarco Pallis were also relatives. His father Alex was general manager of the family firm of merchant bankers,Ralli Brothers; when he retired, he returned from India to settle inSwitzerland. Educated there, Chris Pallis became fluent in French, English and Greek.[1]
In 1940, the family managed to take the last boat out of France, and settled in England. Pallis went on to study medicine atBalliol College, Oxford in 1941. He joined theCommunist Party of Great Britain, but he was quickly expelled for criticising its policy on theSecond World War, and became a member of theTrotskyistRevolutionary Communist Party.[3]
For the next 20 years he combined a distinguished medical career[4] under his real name with pseudonymous revolutionary socialist writing and translation. After he was outed for his use of the name Martin Grainger in such left-wing journals as theNew Statesman he changed his pseudonym. Subsequently his boss,Christopher Booth, defended him from further press criticism, saying that he was a fine neurologist entitled to his own political views.[5]
Pallis's published works include several eyewitness accounts of key moments in European left politics, such as theBelgian general strike of 1960–1961, theMay 1968 events in France, and Portugal'sCarnation Revolution in 1974–75; a substantial body of English translations of works byCornelius Castoriadis, the main thinker of the French groupSocialisme ou Barbarie; and two short books of his own:The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control (1970) andThe Irrational in Politics (1974), which is largely concerned with sexual politics.[1]
