Kate Mangan

Katharine Prideaux Foster was born in Sedgley, Staffordshire, in 1904.

After leaving school, Kate attended the Slade Art School, before moving to Paris where she worked as a fashion model. She was frequently seen in the Café Royal with her admirer, Augustus John, or dining out at the Tour Eiffel.^[1] It was also in Paris where she met Sherry Mangan, the Irish American scholar and poet, in 1924. They were married in 1931 and separated three years later. She then met a refugee German artist, Jan Kurzke, with whom she travelled to Spain in 1934. She divorced Sherry in 1935.

Following the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Jan was one of a group of volunteers who went out to Spain to join the International Brigades and fought in defence of Madrid, alongside John Cornford, Bernard Knox and John Sommerfield.^[2] Kate followed him out to Spain, working first as a correspondent for the Christian Monitor and later in the Government press office in Valencia, reporting to Constancia de la Mora and Luis Rubio Hidalgo.

While she was working in Spain, Kate met a number of leading writers including W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Ernest Hemingway;^[3] journalists including Lawrence Fernsworth, Hugh Slater, Kitty Bowler and Milly Bennett;^[4] photographers including Walter Reuter, Robert Capa and Gerda Taro;^[5] International Brigade volunteers such as Tom Wintringham and Bob Merriman; doctors such as Norman Bethune and nurses such as Patience Darton.^[6] After Jan was seriously injured by shrapnel, Kate tracked him down to a hospital in Murcia and managed to get him out of Spain to convalesce with friends in Paris. She then returned to her work in the press pffice in Valencia.