Portrait of Griff Maclaurin around the time he left Britain for Spain.
Griff Maclaurin was a brilliant mathematician from a distinguished Auckland family who had left New Zealand to study in Britain. He arrived in Madrid on 8 November 1936 as part of the International Column. He was joined in his small detachment of 'English' machine-gunners by another New Zealander, Steve Yates.
They took up a position inside Madrid University’s School of Philosophy and Letters. Using the larger books from the departmental library, they barricaded themselves in, discovering that ‘bullets generally penetrated to about page 350’. They were among the first international volunteers to be killed in the Spanish Civil War when their position was overrun on 10 November.
Courtesy of James McNeish
