Never More Alive

Kate Mangan was a graduate of Slade Art School and sometime model and danseuse in Paris, much admired by Augustus John. She went out to Spain in 1936 in search of her lover, Jan Kurzke, a German refugee who had joined the International Brigade to fight in defence of the Spanish Republic. She ended up working for the Republic's Press & Censorship office, travelling around Spain, visiting the battlefront and meeting a host of characters including W.H. Auden, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and many others. When Jan was seriously injured she visited him in hospital, helped him across the border into France and left him with friends in Paris so she could return to her job in Valencia. This is her previously unpublished memoir, with a Preface by Paul Preston and an Afterword by her daughter, Charlotte Kurzke.