A university classics lecturer by profession, he was elected a Member of Parliament in 1945 and became a significant figure among the party's advocates of Zionism.
[3] Crossman grew up in Buckhurst Hill, Essex, and was educated at Twyford School, and at Winchester College (although founders' kin privileges at Winchester were abolished in 1857,[4] Crossman was "founder's kin", being descended from William of Wykeham through John Danvers, one of his father's ancestors),[5][6] where he became head boy.
[9] In an early diary, he describes an Easter holiday with an unnamed young poet: "He kept me in a little white-washed room for a fortnight because his mouth was against mine and we were completely together.
[11] At the outbreak of the Second World War, Crossman joined the Political Warfare Executive under Robert Bruce Lockhart, where he headed the German Section.
[12] He produced anti-Nazi propaganda broadcasts for the BBC German Service and the Radio of the European Revolution, set up by the Special Operations Executive (SOE).
[14][15] Crossman became a key participant in the annual Königswinter Conference, organised by Lilo Milchsack to bring together British and German legislators, academics and opinion-formers from 1950 onwards.
Other attendees at the conferences included Denis Healey, soon to become a Labour Party politician, and Robin Day, later a political broadcaster.
Crossman entered the House of Commons at the 1945 general election as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Coventry East, a seat he held until shortly before he died in 1974.
During 1945–46 he served, on the nomination of the Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, as a member of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry into the Problems of European Jewry and Palestine.
The committee's report, submitted in April 1946, included a recommendation for 100,000 Jewish displaced persons to be permitted to enter Mandatory Palestine.
"[22] He never forgave either of them for anti-Zionist policies, later telling Frank Soskice:"You seem to have forgotten that Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin plotted to destroy the Jews in Palestine and the encouraged the Arabs to murder the lot.
"[23]Crossman cemented his role as a leader of the left-wing of the Parliamentary Labour Party in 1947 by co-authoring the Keep Left pamphlet, and later became one of the more prominent Bevanites.
In 1957, Crossman was one of the plaintiffs, along with Aneurin Bevan and Morgan Phillips, in a claim for libel made against The Spectator, which had described the three men as drinking heavily during a socialist conference in Italy.
During the months of political turmoil that led up to the election loss, Crossman had been considered, however briefly, as a last-minute option to replace Wilson as Prime Minister.
Crossman is best remembered for his colourful and highly subjective three-volume Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, written while he was living in Vincent Square, published posthumously from 1975 to 1977 and covering his time in government from 1964 to 1970.
One of Crossman's legal executors was Michael Foot, then a cabinet minister, who opposed his own government's attempts to suppress the diaries.
[35] Among other things, the diaries describe Crossman's battles with "the Dame", his Permanent Secretary Evelyn Sharp, GBE (1903–1985), the first woman in Britain to hold the position.
Anne Crossman worked at Bletchley Park during the Second World War, and served as secretary to Maurice Edelman MP.