Born
Frideswide Frances Emma Stewart, and known as Frida, she was the daughter of
Hugh Fraser Stewart (1863–1948) and his wife Jessie Graham Crum; her sister Caitin (Katherine) married
George Derwent Thomson, and her brother Ludovic married
Alice Mary Naish. She left school at 14 with a heart condition, and spent time in Italy. A student of music and drama, Stewart went with one of her sisters to Germany in 1928, studying the violin, and then went to the
Royal College of Music. She spent time at the Manchester University Settlement and
Hull University College. In 1935 she visited the
Soviet Union on a British Drama League trip. Stewart then joined the
Left Book Club and
Communist Party of Great Britain, and formed local Spanish Aid committees on the outbreak of the
Spanish Civil War. In 1937 she was at a hospital in Murcia with Kathleen MacColgan and Eunice Chapman. Arrested in France in 1940, after the German invasion, Stewart was in the
Caserne Vauban (
Besançon) and then the
Vittel internment camp. She escaped in 1942, with Rosemary Say. She then worked for the
Free French in London. In later life Frida Knight wrote, and campaigned for many causes. ==Works==