This event will feature readings by actor and IBMT president Marlene Sidaway. Richard Baxell, the foremost historian of the British volunteers in Spain, will talk about the memoirs written by them.

Other speakers include the author’s son, Jim Jump, and grand-daughter, Meirian Jump. They are respectively the IBMT chair and the MML archivist and library manager. There will be music from Maddy Carty and refreshments.

Jimmy Jump was a reporter with the Worthing Herald when he joined the International Brigades in November 1937. Having learnt Spanish at school in Wallasey, his skills as a translator were highly valued. For nearly six months he served at the 15th Brigade’s training base at Tarazona de la Mancha and then at brigade HQ in Albacete. In May 1938 he joined the British Battalion’s machine-gun company and saw action that summer at the Battle of the Ebro, where he was mentioned in despatches for bravery. He came home with the rest of the battalion in December 1938.

In his forward to this previously unpublished memoir, leading Spanish Civil War historian Paul Preston writes: ‘What shines through this self-deprecation, painfully honest and brutally realistic memoir is a writer with a poet’s eye for detail, a gentle sense of humour and, above all, the intelligence of a thoroughly decent man.’