Crispin Green explains why he has created a graphic novel, ‘Meeting Trouble Half Way’, telling the story of his grandparents, George and Nan Green, in the Spanish Civil War.

In 2015 I started to sketch scenes related to International Brigade volunteers and Spain. This helped to bridge a gap to the past after my father, Martin Green, died. It was then that I fully realised the extent to which the Spanish Civil War had on him through the involvement of his parents, Nan and George Green. 

My father wrote that the war had been the biggest impact on his life. He and his sister, Frances, became orphans in effect, after his father was killed outside Gandesa in September 1938 during the last hours of the last day of battle involving the International Brigades on the Ebro front. And after returning from Spain alone, his mother stoically dedicated her life to continue the fight for a fairer and more just world, leading to her long absences from home. 

George Green (left), who was a professional musician, and Nan Green (right) are depicted on the cover.

The Spanish Civil War, followed almost seamlessly by World War Two, were years in which my father grew from toddler into adolescence, emerging as a young adult in a postwar world with its threat of nuclear annihilation. As a young man he was not drawn into political activity, feeling instead that finding one’s salvation was an individual thing, and he would seek his through becoming a writer.

It was later in life when he began venerating the volunteers who, like his parents, went to Spain in the firm belief that they were acting out of a commitment to save future generations of children from the tyranny of dictatorships and fascism by stopping them in Spain.  

After years of Franco’s repressive dictatorship there followed a transitional democracy secured by a pact of silence about the past. Ageing surviving International Brigaders could begin to return to Spain, put old ghosts to rest and fulfil the promise made in the farewell speech in Barcelona in October 1938 that they would return to a free Spain.

Martin wrote ‘Gandesa: Elegy for the Dead in Spain 1936-1939’, saying it enabled him to do two things: ‘To say farewell to a father I last saw when I was four years old and to give a more permanent memorial to the men of the XV International Brigade who died in Spain.’

I was as remote from Martin as he was from his parents as a child, growing up in Canada where my mother began a new life following the separation and divorce from my father soon after they were married. 

There were few references to the Spanish war in my new world, but there was one occasion when a friend of my mother invited her to a dinner party hosted by her husband, Alfonso, who was attached to the Spanish consulate in Montreal. 

Somehow the conversation touched on the civil war and my mother, never slow in coming forward, contributed to the conversation by telling the company that her son's grandfather fought Franco and his fascist allies in Spain, whereupon Alfonso, as the presiding host and Franco's official representative in Montreal, stood up at the head of the table, solemnly pointed towards the door with his extended arm and ordered her out of the room.

My mother was probably glad to get out of what must have been stifling company that evening, and on reflection may have considered herself fortunate not to have uttered such a remark in Spain itself. The Monty Python rejoinder ‘I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition’ was not in currency at the time, otherwise she could have added that as a parting shot.  

When I heard this story I did not know anything about the Spanish Civil War, but I was instinctively proud of my mother and proud of a grandfather I knew nothing about. It took time to learn more about my family, Spain and the generation that went there in 1936-39. Some may call it a transgenerational journey.

I started sketching as a process of discovery, which led to the idea for a graphic novel. I took the opening scene from my father’s unpublished play called ‘The Tolerance of the Crows’ as my cue, where three characters discuss their reasons for going to Spain while at a secret clearing house in King Street, London. 

After this introduction the graphic novel took on a life of its own. The title, ‘Meeting Trouble Halfway’, is a phrase my grandfather used in a letter sent from Spain explaining to his mother his reason for going; that if the fascists were not stopped in Spain they would be dropping bombs from the sky over London next. It turned out he was right and that is why he went.

‘Meeting Trouble Half Way’ opens in London late in 1936. Student Newton teams up with Dai, a Welsh unemployed miner, and Isaac, a Jewish East Ender, all of whom are preparing to undertake the adventurous journey to Spain. At the same time three young seasonal crop pickers, Hans and Klaus, refugees from Nazi Germany, and Inés, a student from Cuba, are heading to fight Mosley's Blackshirts in Cable Street, after which they will join the medical volunteers supporting the International Brigades in Spain.

The novel is a fictional romp through these historical events, inspired partly by my reflection that the subject was absent in the range of comics available when growing up and how there was a general paucity of popular cultural references to the Spanish Civil War.

The drama has resonances in today's world, where political and social extremes are polarising, popular nationalism is on the rise and the theatre of war comes ever closer into our front rooms from our TV screens. 

‘Meeting Trouble Half Way’ (82 pages) is published by Glass Spider on 5 October 2024 and can be ordered now from bookshops or online. You can hear more about the graphic novel at its launch on 25 October at Backstory in Balham, London – see the event listing for full details.

Selected pages from 'Meeting Trouble Half Way'.