Charlotte Franken was born in
Sydenham, London. Her parents were Jewish immigrants, her father, Joseph, a German fur trader. In 1906 the family moved to
Antwerp. She enrolled on a typing course in London. Charlotte later described herself as a "feminist and
suffragette" from the age of sixteen. Her 1927 book
Motherhood and Its Enemies drew some criticism for its attacks on
spinsters and suffragettes for "devaluing motherhood" and causing male-female "sex antagonism." Despite Charlotte Haldane's feminism,
Sheila Jeffreys has called
Motherhood and its Enemies "an
antifeminist classic". In 1937 Charlotte joined the
Communist Party of Great Britain. Later she acted as a guide and interpreter to
Paul Robeson when he toured the country during the war. Her son, Ronny, also joined the International Brigades and was wounded in the arm, returning to Britain in the autumn of 1937. Charlotte Haldane was sent to the Moscow by the
Daily Sketch to report on the Soviets' progress in defending themselves against the German invasion of 1941 (called
Operation Barbarossa). She witnessed peasant protests against
collectivisation and became disillusioned with the monolithic defense of Soviet communism, which J.B.S. still believed in, writing about it in
Russian Newsreel. She spent her last years writing biographies of several historical figures. She died in 1969 from
pneumonia. == Bibliography ==