...Reggie Smith, a Communist and an old school friend of [Walter] Allen's. As an undergraduate at Birmingham University, Reggie Smith had published Allen's first work in the student magazine Mermaid, together with material by their friend Henry Reed and by Robert Melville.
A tidbit also appears in, of all places, Selections from Freedom, articles selected from the Freedom, the Anarchist Weekly (London). It appears to be a letter signed by many prominent writers and artists of the time, protesting conditions still to be found in Spain in the early 1950s: 'We insist that the Government of General Franco be obliged to honour the pledges which it gave on joining [UNESCO].'
Lots of familiar names rally in support, including Reed, Laurie Lee, Hugh MacDiarmid, William Plomer, Sacheverell Sitwell, and Stephen Spender.
