The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction - Helen Graham

The Spanish Civil War is the fulcrum of twentieth century political history. The short, tragic life of the Spanish Republic exerts a hold on the imagination beyond the scope of the conflict and the scale of the bloodletting. It ramifies through Auden, Orwell and Hemingway, the Clash, down to Pan’s Labyrinth. The war was a clash of ideologies and nations, but Helen Graham’s scholarly, ethically-attuned recapitulation is capable of illuminating with a few strokes the individuals in its throes, like Oliver Law, the black commander of the Abraham Lincoln brigade—American republican sympathizers who, in Auden’s words, “came to present their lives.”