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Alex Tudor Hart studied at Cambridge University where he was a student of John Maynard Keynes. Later he studied medicine in London.

Alex Tudor Hart joined the Communist Party of Great Britain and went to Austria to study orthopaedics under the famous surgeon Professor Boehler.

In 1925 Tudor Hart met the photographer, Edith Suschitzky. They married at the British consulate in Vienna in 1933. On their return to Britain he became a GP in the Rhondda Valley in Wales. Edith Tudor Hart documented a great many of her husband's patients and their children, living conditions, home and working lives. In 1935 she contributed to the Artists' International Association (AIA) exhibition, Artists against Fascism and Against War.

On the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War Tudor Hart decided that he must contribute to the war against fascism. In December 1936 he joined the British Medical Aid Unit. When he arrived in Spain André Marty appointed him to the rank of major.

Dr. Kenneth Sinclair-Loutit, who was head of the British Medical Aid Unit, later wrote: "Tudor-Hart was a sensible man and after one attempt at exercising his senior rank in an area in which he lacked competence (trying to lead a convoy while losing his way near the fascist lines), he restricted himself to the field in which he was superb - traumatic surgery. He saved hundreds of lives and thousands of limbs, and I am proud to have worked with him."

Tudor Hart returned to Wales in October 1938. His son, Julian Tudor Hart, became a general practitioner in Glyncorrwg, a mining village in the Rhondda Valley. In later years he enjoyed a relationship with Innes Herdan.

Dr. Alex Tudor Hart died in 1992.

Spanish Civil War Encyclopedia

^ Main Article ^

(1) Kenneth Sinclair Loutit, Very Little Luggage (2009)

As I was told on my return from London, Marty was most happy to accept the Spanish Medical Aid Unit as an integral part of the Medical Service of the International Brigade. Dr Neumann, the IB/HQ medical staff-officer indicated that my news and messages from the Spanish Medical Aid Committee should await a subsequent general meeting of the British group that he was arranging. That would be the appropriate moment to present to Comrade Marty the messages that I had brought with me. Dr Neuman said that André Marty was arranging all the necessary moves to ensure our getting to work with as little delay as possible. It was only very much later that I came to see why we had been the subject of such special consideration. Thora thought that I should perhaps open my belt and produce Harry Pollit's little bit of silk in order to secure a proper meeting with André Marty about the future of our whole Grañen group. Surprise, surprise - the very next morning the belt had gone - but nothing else had been stolen from our room. We did not so much regret the inevitable decision to leave well alone; we resented more the way it had been forced. We were after all going where we had wanted to go - into the crucial front of the war and into the International Brigade.

The general meeting came in a day or two. It was not André Marty but Colonel Domanski-Dubois, PMO of the 35th Division, who presided. Later I got to know him well and can see him to this day with his little smile and firm but somehow comforting manner. He was to give his life in the Aragon offensive of August 1937. For him the meeting was called to induct a group of newly recruited personnel into his Division and to give them their assignments. We were going as a Unit into the 14th (French speaking) International Brigade. He had brought with him all that he needed, namely the badges of rank for the new officers. This he would not have been able to do without prior briefing about the persons concerned. In a genial, informal way he put into Tudor Hart's hands the insignia of a Major, into Archie Cochrane's that of a Captain and into mine the single stripe of a sub-lieutenant, saying, "C'est tous qui me reste" Externally Tudor Hart did not register surprise; Cochrane, who was, like me, a. medical student and who had worked happily with me in Grañen was visibly disconcerted. We had worked together very easily in Grañen, and he had accepted without second thoughts the fact of my being in charge - a seniority that had well ante-dated his own arrival. As the Spanish Medical Aid Administrator, I had been responsible for the Unit in all but the strictly medical sense.

I realised that I could only roll with the punches in this competently managed mini-coup. Hart, in contrast to myself, did not know a word of Spanish. Someone would have to see to the daily running of the Unit (I had, after all, played a major part in turning it into an operational entity) while Hart worked as a surgeon. So far as Thora and myself were concerned, all that mattered was that the work should go on efficiently. In fact everything sorted itself out surprisingly quickly. Tudor-Hart was a sensible man and after one attempt at exercising his senior rank in an area in which he lacked competence (trying to lead a convoy while losing his way near the fascist lines), he restricted himself to the field in which he was superb - traumatic surgery. He saved hundreds of lives and thousands of limbs, and I am proud to have worked with him. We were attached to the 14th Brigade which was very largely French. Bit by bit I eventually pieced together the reasons for the very special consideration being shown to our Unit and for the manner of our assignment, some aspects of which only became clear to me very much later.