High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Sir Alfred Sherman, KBE, (10 November 1919 – 26 August 2006) was a writer, journalist, and political analyst. Described by a long-time associate as "a brilliant polymath, a consummate homo politicus, and one of the last true witnesses to the 20th century", he began life as a Communist soldier in the Spanish Civil War but later changed views completely and became a hawkish adviser to Margaret Thatcher.