Ralph Winston Fox

Ralph Winston Fox (30 March 1900, Halifax, United Kingdom - 27 December 1936, Lopera, Jaén, Spain) was a British novelist, social historian, journalist, translator and politician.

Fox studied modern languages at Oxford University, identified himself with socialist and communist political movements after a visit to the Soviet Union in 1920, where he saw the effects of the Russian Revolution of 1917 for himself. He was one of the founders of the Communist Party of Great Britain. In 1936, in order to fight in the Spanish Civil War, Fox joined the International Brigades through the French Communist Party in Paris. When he arrived in Spain at the end of the year, he was sent to be trained in Albacete and was assigned to the XIV Brigade. He was immediately taken to the front in the first operations in which the Brigades were involved, and he died in the province of Jaén in December, 1936, though some biographies give January 1937, the date when his death was made public.

There is a bench dedicated to Ralph Fox in his hometown of Halifax at Bull Green, although this bench incorrectly states his death as January 1937.

Works

*"Ralph Fox: a writer in arms". London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1937.
*"Genghis Khan". New York, Harcourt Brace and Company. 1936.