We Saw Spain Die - Hardcover

Paul Preston

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1845298519 ISBN 13: 9781845298517

Publisher: Constable, 2008

Synopsis

The war in Spain and those who wrote at first hand of its horrors. From 1936 to 1939 the eyes of the world were fixed on the devastating Spanish conflict that drew both professional war correspondents and great writers.

Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Josephine Herbst, Martha Gellhorn, W H Auden, Stephen Spender, Kim Philby, George Orwell, Arthur Koestler, Cyril Connolly, André Malraux, Antoine de Saint Exupéry and others wrote eloquently about the horrors they saw at first hand. Together with many great and now largely forgotten journalists, they put their lives on the line, discarding professionally dispassionate approaches and keenly espousing the cause of the partisans.

Facing censorship, they fought to expose the complacency with which the decision-makers of the West were appeasing Hitler and Mussolini. Many campaigned for the lifting of non-intervention, revealing the extent to which the Spanish Republic had been betrayed. Peter Prestons exhilarating account illuminates the moment when war correspondence came of age.

About this title

Review:

Excellent...a splendid monument to scholarship. Always absorbing, frequently moving...it fills a crucial gap in the historiography of the Spanish civil war. (The Sunday Times)

I cannot commend it enough. The story of those who fought to tell the story, at risk to their own lives and against the natural grain of their readers, is a cracker of a subject. [Preston] unpicks the tangles of lies, allegations and half-truths; revives reputations that have unjustly faded; and presents us with an overview that is lucid, unhurried and fresh to read (Nicholas Shakespeare Daily Telegraph)

A pioneering investigation of those foreign correspondents who did so much to influence world opinion at the time ... Preston sweeps the reader along with the lucidity of his prose, his passionate commitment to the subject, and, above all, his concern to rescue the reputations of those unjustly neglected and courageous figures who worked alongside far more famous names such as Hemingway, Dos Passos, Kim Philby and Martha Gellhorn. (Literary Review)

Paul Preston has become a hugely influential historian of the Spanish Civil War, not only for his scholarship, but for his eye for detail and skill as a storyteller. In We Saw Spain Die these talents come to the fore, aided not only by the richness of the material, but also Preston's deep enthusiasm for his subject.

(Jason Webster New Statesman)

This testament to their testimony could not have been supplied by a more erudite expert. Preston is a peerless historian of Spain, and the only one who writes as readably as a professional journalist (Independent)

A work of impressive scholarship. (BBC History Magazine)

What marks out his work is not just an understanding of the period ... but also an ability to choose an angle from which to make old history seem new. (The Herald)

There is much to inspire in the courage and commitment of these journalists and Preston has done us proud in telling their stories (Morning Star)

A copper-bottomed tour de force (Catholic Herald)

Compelling .... required reading for anyone in Spain or war reporting. (The Tablet)

Book Description:

We Saw Spain Die is about the courage and the skill of the men and women who wrote about what was happening in Spain during the Civil War, by the world's leading authority.

About this edition

• Publisher: Constable
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1845298519
• ISBN 13: 9781845298517
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416