Clive Branson
Clive Ali Chimmo Branson (1907 – 25 February 1944) was an English artist and poet, and an active communist in the 1930s. A number of his paintings are in the Tate Gallery. His wife was Noreen Branson (16 May 1910 – 25 October 2003). Their daughter is the artist Rosa Branson (born 1933).
Life
[edit]He was an active recruiter for the International Brigade, and himself fought in the Spanish Civil War from January 1938, being captured at Calaceite on 31 March 1938. As a prisoner of war at the Nationalist camp of San Pedro de Cardeña, he painted and sketched the camp and many of its inmates, at the request of the authorities; some of this work survives in the Marx Memorial Library in London.[1]
He married Noreen Browne in 1931. Their daughter Rosa Branson was born in 1933. He died in action in Burma on 25 February 1944, where he was serving as a Sergeant in the British Army, as part of the 54th Training Regiment of the Royal Armoured Corps.[2]
Branson was killed commanding an M3 Lee tank of B Squadron, 25th Dragoons. He was hit a glancing but fatal blow on the back of the head by a Japanese anti-tank shell near Point 315 at the end of the Battle of the Admin Box. Branson was a popular man in the unit and his crew "were inconsolable".[3] His friend, the composer Bernard Stevens, dedicated his 1945 Symphony of Liberation to the memory of Branson.[4]
Sources
[edit]- British Soldier in India: The Letters of Clive Branson (1945), with introduction by Harry Pollitt.
- Richard Baxell. Unlikely Warriors: The British in the Spanish Civil War and the Struggle Against Fascism (London: Aurum, 2012)
- Mirante, Edith: “A Death in Arakan: Clive Branson, Antifascist Painter and Poet” Mekong Review (2023, March) online
- Richard Knott: The Secret War Against the Arts (Pen & Sword, 2020).
- Richard Knott (ed.): 'The Selected Poems of Clive Branson' (Smokestack Books, 2023).
Notes
[edit]- ^ Baxell, Richard (2012). Unlikely Warriors: The British in the Spanish Civil War and the Struggle Against Fascism. London: Aurum Press. p. 448. ISBN 978-1-84513-697-0.
- ^ Branson, Noreen (1997). History of the Communist Party 1941–51. London: Lawrence & Wishart. p. 55. ISBN 0-85315-862-2.
- ^ Holland, James (2016). Burma '44. London: Corgi. pp. 359–60.
- ^ Andrew Burn. Notes to Classic Widows, Chandos CD 7008 (1995)
External links
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