John Langdon-Davies

John Eric Langdon-Davies (18 March 1897 – 5 December 1971) was a British author and journalist. He was a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War and the Soviet-Finnish War. As a result of his experiences in Spain, he founded the Foster Parents' Scheme for refugee children in Spain, which is now the aid organisation Plan International.

Author of books on military, scientific, historical and Spanish subjects, Langdon-Davies has been described as "an accomplished war correspondent" and "a brilliant populariser of science and technology". Langdon-Davies came to England at the age of six and attended Yardley Park prep school and Tonbridge School (he disliked the latter intensely). to another, "Mr Langdon-Davies's verse owes nothing to the transient excitements of the hour", referring to the fact that it was not influenced by war fever. The Times Literary Supplement said it was "the outcome of a brooding imagination intensely affected by open-air influences ... and expressing itself with a real sense of style".

When called up in 1917 he declared himself a conscientious objector and refused to wear uniform. In it, he attacked the pseudoscientists whose books were so popular in the US, particularly advocates of racial superiority, such as Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard, whom Langdon-Davies described as "Race Fiends". Langdon-Davies's book and his passionate critiques of the scientific racism popular at the time provoked a number of counterattacks, pointing out that Langdon-Davies himself was not a professional scientist. Most of the 60 or more published reviewers of The New Age of Faith were in agreement with John Bakeless, who wrote that "rarely has popular science been written with such spicy impertinence, such gay insouciance, or with so much intelligence and such scrupulous regard for facts...".

Langdon-Davies then moved to Sant Feliu de Guíxols, on the Catalan coast, where he stayed from 1926 to 1928 and wrote Dancing Catalans, a study of the significance of the 'Catalan national dance', the sardana. Twenty years later the Catalan writer Josep Pla said that it was the best book ever published on the sardana: "With the exception of the poetry of Joan Maragall, there is nothing in our language comparable with this essay". A Short History of Women, published in New York, had also appeared in 1927. In it Langdon-Davies traced the development of the idea of Woman from the primitive taboo, the Christian fear, worship of fertility, etc., which was now to be reshaped by the new knowledge. Virginia Woolf commented on some of the author's ideas in A Room of One's Own. In 1929 he settled in Devon but three years later (1932) he moved back to the US. Langdon-Davies' Man and his Universe (1930) was a history of humanity's scientific views, covering the period from Ancient Greece to Einstein. He returned to England again in 1935 and lived at Clapham Common. During this time, Langdon-Davies developed strong left-wing views; although not a member of the Communist Party, he was sympathetic to its activities. His book A Short History of the Future argued an alliance of Britain, France and the Soviet Union was necessary as a bulwark against fascist aggression. whom he left with the "Revolutionary Committee" in Puigcerdà for safe keeping. The following year he wrote Behind the Spanish Barricades, in which he recorded the exuberance of the short-lived proletarian revolution in Barcelona and also reported on the horrors of war as he visited Toledo during the siege of the Alcázar. The book was a critical success and "even received favourable mention in the House of Lords". Behind the Spanish Barricades has recently been republished by The Clapton Press, with a prologue by Paul Preston.

Langdon-Davies expressed admiration for anarchism in Spain. He described anarchists in 1938 as "superb, loveable human beings" but felt they could not arrange an effective defence against the Nationalists. In a debate against Fenner Brockway, Langdon-Davies supported the motion "that the suppression of the POUM was vital to the anti-fascist cause in Spain".

In 1937 with aid worker Eric Muggeridge he founded the Foster Parents Plan for Children in Spain which has become Plan International.

Popular front In Britain during 1939 there was a strong popular front movement inside both the Labour Party and the Liberal Party for the two parties to come together to support one candidate at constituency level. A general election was expected to take place later in the year. In some instances where it was difficult for Labour to support a Liberal candidate or Liberal to support a Labour candidate, the two parties would agree to support an independent progressive candidate. Even though Langdon-Davies had stood as Labour candidate for Epsom in 1923, he had not been involved with the party since. In Rye, Labour had not selected a candidate and the Liberal candidate had stepped down in February. The two parties formed a joint committee who approached Langdon-Davies who agreed to be their candidate. He was adopted as prospective candidate by this committee in July 1939 and spent the next five weeks campaigning in the constituency. After war broke out, the expected election was not called and he never contested the division.

Later career Langdon-Davies's home "The Sundial" in South Holmwood, near Dorking, was built in 1903 for Mr and Mrs Pethick Lawrence as a country home for the Espérance Club for working-class London girls. A sundial with the motto, "Let others tell of storms and showers, I tell of sunny morning hours", is on the south-east wall Langdon-Davies was dismayed by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact which caused him to repudiate the Soviet Union as having become the betrayer of socialism.

After the war Langdon-Davies was in the anti-Stalinist left and stated the Soviet government had "declared against the liberty of the mind of man". Langdon-Davies' Russia Puts the Clock Back was an indictment of Soviet science under Stalin's rule, particularly Lysenkoism. Gatherings from Catalonia was a travel book describing the history of the province. His biography of Charles II of Spain, Carlos: The King who would Not Die was praised by the journal Hispania, which stated, "The events of this history are recounted with a fine evocative power supported by impressive research".

In the early 1960s he created the "Jackdaw" series of history learning aids for school children, published by Jonathan Cape. The series was commended by the British Journal of Educational Studies.

Legacy Plan International, the children's charity Langdon-Davies co-founded, now works in 50 of the world's poorest countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America. In March 2014 his book The Invasion in the Snow, about the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939, was translated into Finnish to mark the 75th anniversary. Proceeds from the book helped support Plan International.