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2013 Len Crome lecture: Homage to Catalonia 75 years on

Crome_flyer

Over the last ten years, the hugely successful annual Len Crome lecture series has seen a number of academics from Britain, Spain and America deliver keynote lectures on their particular areas of expertise, at the Imperial War Museum in London. A collection of the first ten lectures was published by Lawrence and Wishart in 2010 as Looking Back at the Spanish Civil War. However, the closure of the Imperial Museum in 2013 for refurbishment forced a re-think.

The decision was helped by this year being a major George Orwell anniversary, marked by a number of programmes on BBC radio 4, including a radio dramatisation of Orwell’s famous account of his time fighting in the Spanish Civil War, Homage to Catalonia. Consequently, it was decided to bring together a number of historians to discuss Orwell’s account of his time in Spain and, in particular, the significance of the infamous events in Barcelona during May 1937.

The event was held in the Manchester Conference Centre, on 2 March 2013. Chaired expertly by Mary Vincent, Professor of Modern Europen History at the University of Sheffield, the four speakers and their papers were:

Richard Baxell: George Orwell and the British Battalion
Paul Preston*: George Orwell and the Spanish Civil War
Tom Buchanan: Homage to Catalonia; its reception and impact
Chris Hall: Not Just Orwell; the Independent Labour Party Volunteers

*Sadly Paul Preston was unwell, but he very kindly allowed his paper to be read out by a proxy (IBMT Secretary, Jim Jump).

Jim Jump delivering Paul Preston's paper on George Orwell and the Spanish Civil War © Creative Commons, BY-NC-SA 3.0,  IBMT and Marshall Mateer
Jim Jump delivering Paul Preston’s paper on George Orwell and the Spanish Civil War
© Creative Commons, BY-NC-SA 3.0, IBMT and Marshall Mateer

For those who missed what was a very successful and popular event, the four lectures will be placed online and a short video of some of the highlights will be available on Youtube. In the meantime, Marshall Mateer has put some material on the IBMT’s Flickr site and Lydia Syson, author of A World Between Us, has written an account of the day on her blog.

L to R: Chris Hall, Mary Vincent, Richard Baxell and Tom Buchanan © Creative Commons, BY-NC-SA 3.0, IBMT and Marshall Mateer
L to R: Chris Hall, Mary Vincent, Richard Baxell and Tom Buchanan
© Creative Commons, BY-NC-SA 3.0, IBMT and Marshall Mateer