Biography
Guest was the son of Leslie Haden-Guest, 1st Baron Haden-Guest. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1929 and studied from 1930 to 1931 in Göttingen in Germany, where he became involved in anti-Nazi politics, and joined the Communist Party at Cambridge in 1931. After leaving Cambridge he lectured in mathematics and worked for the Communist party, even teaching in a secondary school for English-speaking children in Moscow.
In 1938 he left work as a lecturer at University College in Southampton to volunteer for the International Brigade fighting in Spain. He wrote of his decision:
- Today we have certainly entered a period of crisis, when the arguments of 'normal times' no longer apply, when considerations of most immediate usefulness come in. That is why I have decided to take the opportunity of going to Spain.
On 28 July 1938 during the Battle of the Ebro David Guest was killed on Hill 481 at Gandesa by a sniper as he read a newspaper.
After his death, notes he had made while lecturing at the Marx Memorial Workers' School were published as A Text Book of Dialectical Materialism in 1939.
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