Humphrey Slater

A British writer and painter, born in 1906. Considered a promising abstract artist in the middle of the 1920s, in the early 30s he joined the Communist party, to later enlist with the International Brigades. LIke Orwell and thousands of other Brigadists, he felt the call to Spain, although his time fighting in the Spanish Civil War was the reason for his ultimately becoming disenchanted with communism. On his return to Britain he trained the National Guard in urban warfare techniques and was for a couple of years the editor of the journal Polemic. Branded a subversive by the authorities due to his Communist militancy, he was kept under strict surveillance by the secret services. The author of a body of work consisting of half a dozen novels and essays, Humphrey Slater died in Spain in 1958, when he seemed to be writing his memoirs.