John Cornford

Rupert John Cornford (27 December 1915 – 28 December 1936) was an English poet and communist. He was the son of F. M. Cornford and Frances Cornford.

He was born in Cambridge, and educated at Stowe School and Trinity College, Cambridge. As an undergraduate, reading history, he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. He was two or three years younger than the group of Trinity College communists including Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Kim Philby and James Klugmann .

Another Cambridge student, who would play a major part in his life, was Margot Heinemann, the future historian. They were lovers, and he addressed both poems and surviving letters to her.

From 1933 he was directly involved in Communist Party work, in London, and becoming involved with Harry Pollitt. During the Spanish Civil War he both recruited in Cambridge for the International Brigade, and fought himself: firstly though he was in a POUM unit in Aragon in August 1936, before returning home, and coming back in December. He was killed at Lopera , near Madrid.

In poetic terms, he was no modernist; as George Orwell pointed out in 1940, he represented continuity with the older, imperial tradition.

Works

• Understand the Weapon, Understand the Wound: Selected Writings of John Cornford (1976) edited by Jonathan Galassi