The Spanish Civil War

"In my five choices I have included Helen Graham’s short, very precise and up-to-date scholarly essay on the war. So I thought that, given that these will be five books aimed at people starting to be interested in the Spanish Civil War or indeed people who we might want to get interested in the subject, it would be a good idea to have a big colourful account of the war. I was torn between Thomas’s book and Antony Beevor’s. Both books are very similar, both very lively and well written. But even though Thomas’s is a much older book I think it wins by a short head. It has been revised several times. I was his research assistant at one point for the third edition, which was the biggest revision. It is immensely colourful. I wouldn’t say I agree with all his views on aspects of the civil war by any means. But when I am working on the war, there is not a week that goes by when I don’t take it off the shelf to look at what he says about a particular incident. It really is a remarkable achievement that when I go back and look at this book, which is now 50 years old, I find his take on things is still fresh. I always find I can get some inspiration from picking it up. And for anyone who has never read anything on the Spanish Civil War it is an immediately gripping book that shows just how much the subject has to offer. There is that sense of the rich cornucopia of characters and topics which, as I mentioned before, is what got me interested in the subject all those years ago."