Our Fathers Fought Franco

Willy Maley teaches at the University of Glasgow and is co-author, with his brother John, of From the Calton to Catalonia, a play based around their father’s experiences in Spain in 1937.

Lisa Croft lives in Lancashire and was a library assistant for over 20 years. She writes this account on behalf of her mother, Rosemary Nina Williams, who was born when her father was imprisoned in Spain, and for her aunt, Jennifer Talavera Williams, who is named after that Spanish jail’s location.

Jennie Renton is a secondhand bookseller and publishing freelancer in her home city of Edinburgh. As founder-editor of Scottish Book Collector she produced over 80 issues of the magazine; she also edited Folio for the National Library of Scotland.

Tam Watters worked as a coal miner for 25 years until Bilston Glen Colliery closed. A keen amateur photographer, he went on to work as a camera sales adviser for the next 23 years and is now retired. In his younger days he was a Scottish weightlifting champion.