John Cornford was a Cambridge Communist activist who travelled to Spain in August 1936. He returned home later that month in a recruiting mission and travelled back to Spain in October with seven recruits. One of these was John Sommerfield, author of Volunteer in Spain. Cornford was killed in action on December 28th, 1936.
Jason Gurney fought in the International Brigades from December 1936 to August 1937. He was a South African by birth who lived in Chelsea and worked as a sculptor. He is the author of Crusade in Spain.
Tony Hyndman was an Ex-Guardsman who became a member of the Communist Party while in a relationship with poet Stephen Spender. After their break-up in late 1936 Hyndman volunteered for the International Brigades. He saw action at Jarama soon after wished to return home. He and friend John Lepper deserted in march, but were arrested and jailed until June, 1937.
George Orwell (Eric Blair), the well-known author, journeyed to Spain in late December 1936. He was a socialist who ahd arrived in Barcelona with paper from the Independent Labour Party and was therefore attached to the POUM militia with whom he fought on several fronts. The POUM became the political scapegoats after the Barcelona street fighting in the summer of i937 and many of its members were arrested and killed. Orwell escaped Spain with his wife Eileen, who had worked in an ILP office.
Esmond Romilly was a teenage public school rebel who ran away from Wellington College to live independently in London and founded the magazine Out of Bounds. He fought in Spain from October 1936 to January 1937 with the independent Nat Cohen Battalion which was soon absorbed by the International Brigades. He returned to write for the News Chronicle in February 1937. His experiences are recorded in Boadilla, written while on honeymoon in the Basque Republic with his wife Jessica Mitford in June 1937. He was killed while a pilot in World War II.
Giles Romilly, Esmond's older brother, left Oxford to fight in Spain in January 1937 with Tony Hyndman. He had various jobs, including as a runner, orderly and translator as well as a soldier. He returned to London in August with health problems but returned to Spain as a reporter.
Stephen Spender, the famous poet, was converted to Communism in late 1936 and went on a fourteen day mission to search for the whereabouts of the Russian battleship Comsomol in January 1937. Soon he returned to head a broadcasting station of the socialist party in Valencia.
Philip Toynbee was a public school radical and friend of Esmond Romilly. He visited Spain as a member of a student delegation from December 1936 to January 1937.
Thomas Cuthbert Worsley was a friend of Spender, Hyndman and Giles Romilly. He had been a master at Wellington while the Romillys attended. While in Spain with Spender he volunteered to join an ambulance brigade in Malaga.