Pictured here with the two speakers at the IBMT's 2019 Len Crome conference in Oxford: to my right, the researcher and author Daniel Gray, to my left historian and The Guardian's football correspondent, Sid Lowe. There are more images on the IBMT's Flickr account.
Full report in the May 2019 issue of ¡No Pasarán!
On 9 August 2017, I introduced a number of readings relating to the International Brigades, movingly delivered by actors Christopher Ecclestone and Yolanda Vazquez and by Margot Heinemann’s daughter, Jane Bernal.
I was very happy to take part in a short six minute film produced by the Gill Parker Consultancy. The film was commissioned by the LSE to showcase the expertise of the university's academics; in this instance Professor of Contemporary Spanish History, Paul Preston. In addition to myself, the film included interviews with former Basque child, Herminio Martínez; Professor of Spanish History, Helen Graham; and Spanish writer and journalist, Lala Isla.
On 31 May 2018 I joined the biographer and filmmaker, Jane Rogoyska, for a presentation at L.S.E.'s Cañada Blanch Centre, chaired by Professor Paul Preston. We were outlining our thoughts on the image that had recently appeared on social media: did it really show the celebrated photojournalist, Gerda Taro, on her death bed?
In the Sky News studio talking about the former International Brigader, Geoffrey Servante, who died on 22 April 2019, aged 99. He was almost certainly the last surviving British veteran of the Spanish Civil War.
In July 2014 I joined presenter Jonathan Freedland, Shiraz Maher and Usama Hasan for Radio Four's 'The Long View', which discussed attitudes towards British people volunteering to fight in foreign wars.
2026
October 2026, London (precise date and venue TBC). Talk on the Battle of Cable Street and its links with the Spanish Civil War.
28 November 2026, Marx House, London. Len Crome annual event, with Profs Helen Graham and Paul Preston.
As a number of researchers have discovered, the online RGASPI archives in Moscow are currently inaccessible. Attempts to contact RGASPI to establish why the archives are down and when they might be up again have, so far, been unsuccessful.
There was a functioning mirror site here but unfortunately, as of July 2026, it’s no longer active.
In early August 2020 I joined Alex Clifford, author of Fighting for Spain, a new military history of the International Brigades, to talk about their role in the Spanish Civil War.
In a long-ranging discussion lasting almost two hours(!), we discussed the formation of the Brigades, to why and how so many volunteers flocked to Spain, the battles they fought, and the people who served in them. Why did these men (and some women) became History’s Most Unlikely Warriors?
The podcast was released on 7 September and can be found here.
