Christopher Caudwell was a Communist Party member, poet and influential Marxist thinker.
Born into a relatively well to do Catholic family, Caudwell worked as a journalist before working on Marxist critiques on a variety of subjects from poetry to his book The Crisis in Physics.
Like many of his contemporaries, such as John Cornford, Caudwell volunteered for the International Brigades in Spain. Caudwell was killed in the fighting on the first day of the Battle of Jarama, 12th February 1937
Much of his work was published posthumously including his best known book Illusion and Reality.