“DARE Devil Rides to Jarama is quite simply the best political theatre produced for a long, long time,” I wrote when it premiered a few years ago.
 
Now this remarkable tale of two most unusual British volunteers in the Spanish civil war is getting a new lease of life as a podcast from Townsend Productions.

Directed by Louise Townsend, the play tells the story of Wall of Death motorcyclist Clem “Dare Devil” Beckett and Marxist writer and poet Christopher Caudwell, played by writer and performer Neil Gore and David Heywood.

Unlikely friends and comrades, they shared a determination to defend the Spanish republic against Franco fascism and were volunteers for the International Brigade. Both died in February 1937 at the machine-gun post they shared on the first day of the momentous Battle of Jarama.