Product Description

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 Preston’s exhilarating account illuminates the moment when war correspondence came of age.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10488 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Review
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

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

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

A work of impressive scholarship. Preston has trawled archives, diaries and personal papers to amass an understanding of his subjects. The result is a series of richly layered pen pictures, which give us an intimate understanding of the men and women who became the first historians of the Spanish Civil War. --BBC History Magazine

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

A work of impressive scholarship. Preston has trawled archives, diaries and personal papers to amass an understanding of his subjects. The result is a series of richly layered pen pictures, which give us an intimate understanding of the men and women who became the first historians of the Spanish Civil War. --BBC History Magazine

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. --Daily Telegraph

A work of impressive scholarship. Preston has trawled archives, diaries and personal papers to amass an understanding of his subjects. The result is a series of richly layered pen pictures, which give us an intimate understanding of the men and women who became the first historians of the Spanish Civil War. --BBC History Magazine

Passionate and absorbing. - The Guardian

A splendid monument to scholarship. Absorbing, funny, frequently moving ... it fills a crucial gap in the historiography of the Spanish conflict. --The Sunday Times

About the Author
Paul Preston is regarded as the leading historian of twentieth-century Spain alive today. Among his many works are The Triumph of Democracy in Spain (1986), Franco: A Biography (1993), A Concise History of the Spanish Civil War (1996), Comrades (1999), Doves of War: Four Women in Spain (2002) and Juan Carlos (2004). He is Príncipe de Asturias Professor of Contemporary Spanish History and Director of the Cañada Blanch Centre of Contemporary Spanish Studies at the London School of Economics.

Customer Reviews

I Read Preston Live!... Mostly...
Every time I read a book by Preston I feel humbled. Any time I think I know anything about the Spanish Civil War I am proved 100% that Preston is the leading authority on the subject in the UK. Here is another reason why.

The book is immense. As always, well researched and any footnote can be followed as appropriate. Although some of the chapters were a bit cumbersome and could have been broken down, I felt the sheer complexity and nature of the subject (both in political and personal terms of the journalists and the censorship apparatus on both sides of the divide) justified this length. A combination of a general chronology in the first part alongside more developed individual biographies in the second was entirely welcome.

It is a shame that it isn't a multi-volume series, for there are so many people that would be fascinating to follow, yet for lack of space Preston selects the most important AND interesting cases. I thought it was well written in this respect and was very selective in what to include, and what to omit for footnotes.

Particularly interesting was the different attitudes to censorship Preston brings out in a variety of ways. It shows just how tough the Republic had it, how Orwell betrayed trust in the cause of the left, and how utterly repulsive the Nationalist censor - Luis Bolin - is. I came across him before through Chalmers-Mitchell and Koestler, alongside his completely flawed work "Spain: The Vital Years" and this book drives home in personal and political terms how much of a nasty character he was.

I thought the other review did the book a bit of an injustice. While I can get on board with some of the enormous tangents involved (and straying either side of the conflict), some I felt were entirely necessary and helped to deepen understanding. At times I felt the book could benefit from a brief appendix, detailing who was who. For although he does this during the book in particular and painstaking detail, there are so many names I felt as if I was having another War and Peace flashback.

I felt moving from Josephine to Josie Herbst wasn't that much of an issue. All of the protagonists have unique names so I thought overlap unlikely. But there are SO many names I felt (as mentioned above) that an appendix could have been useful. Hemingway, Fischer and others I was suitably familiar with; Elizabeth Deeble I was not. For those coming to Preston for more excellent work on the SCW, I felt his implicit requirement for prior knowledge a little bit of a handicap, but not a major issue. Yes, the book has some issues but I felt it entirely appropriate to leave "La Pasionaria" out as she wasn't really involved in the journalist process.

Overall I thought "We Saw Spain Die" added a new and insightful dimension to the historiography. As always, I find Preston well read, and able to convey his message clearly and coherently. He develops our (or mine at least) understanding both of the politics of the journalists but also their personalities and how you can sit at the end of the book and think on behalf of the injustice of the Republic and the press: "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"

Disappointing
The Spanish Civil War may be one of the most tragic episodes of the 20th Century in terms of lost opportunities. Not only was the opportunity to run a well-supported, idealistic Republican experiment destroyed, but so too was the opportunity to stifle the forces of fascism before they unleashed their global campaign of hate.

Similarly, here is a book that misses an opportunity to throw some light on the journalists who reported on the Civil War with some passion. Instead, what we have is a rather dull account which tends towards the mechanical and often strays well off course, as in the case of the chapter on Mikhail Koltsov. Whilst it is absolutely right that we should be aware of the poisonous impact of Stalinism on the Civil War effort, and the way in which Stalin "thanked" those who served in it, the majority of this chapter barely touches on the war itself.

Paul Preston, the author, has a real problem with names, too, unable to stick to one name for any one person. Hence Josephine Herbst goes from Josephine to Herbst in one chapter, then at the opening of the next suddenly becomes Josie Herbst, prompting the reader to wonder if it's the same person.

Also annoying is the way he keeps reminding us that so-and-so is an American novelist, or great, or celebrated. And how do you have a book about the Spanish Civil War that makes only one mention of La Pasionaria, Delores Ibárruri? And then only in passing?

Fortunately, though the style is drab and irritating it does not take away the interest in the events themselves, though these too often are reported out of context. Particularly interesting is the contrast between the Republicans and Nationalists when it came to censorship, with the Republicans more or less adopting an anything goes attitude, whilst the Nationalists were as like as not to shoot a holder of journalistic credentials.

But the interest, unfortunately, is independent of the author's writing, and I shan't be queuing to buy anything else by him.

If you read Anthony Beevor's The Battle For Spain then this will come as a real disappointment in comparison. If you didn't, then I'd say you should.

we saw spain die
A rambling account of the Spanish Civil war. More concerned with name dropping than giving an insight of what went on at the time.
On the whole a long disappointing read.