Posts Tagged ‘Franco’

  1. New Blood for the Republic: the Spanish Civil War, eighty years on

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    September 6, 2016 by Lydia Syson

    80th anniversary commemorations and conferences have been taking place up and down this country as well as Spain to mark the Spanish Civil War, initiated by a right-wing military coup in July 1936, followed by Franco’s long dictatorship.  It’s a measure of just how involved Britain was in the conflict which many see as a rehearsal for World War Two.  Giving a paper myself about the evolution of my YA novel A World Between Us at the fascinating ‘Spanish Civil War in World Literature’ conference at London’s School of Advanced Studies, I mentioned the iBook edition which was put together in 2012 with the generous help of vast numbers of archives and libraries in the UK and US (thanks here). The image above of a young female anti-fascist donating blood to be sent to the front lines for wounded Republican soldiers was provided by the London School of Economics. The iBook keep reading


  2. Homage to Catalonia: the debate

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    March 4, 2013 by Lydia Syson

    “You’ve written a book about the Spanish Civil War?  Oh yes, Orwell, right?”

    “Mmm. Yes and no.”

    I’ve had a few conversations along these lines in recent months.  It’s hard to explain George Orwell’s complicated relationship to the complicated Civil War in Spain and its complicated historiography in just a few words.  As a teenager, I absolutely loved Homage to Catalonia keep reading


  3. Talking about the Spanish Civil War

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    September 15, 2012 by Lydia Syson

    Paul Preston must know more about the history of twentieth-century Spain than anyone else alive.  A captivating speaker, who charms with his truculence, he’s a hero to thousands, including me.

    The first time I heard him in public I squeezed into the last seat of a dark and crowded basement at the Instituto Cervantes just as he began to introduce his fellow speaker, Julián Casanova.  The event was called  ‘Remembering the Spanish Civil War’. I gulped, keep reading



“A mesmerising portrait of a family unravelling” THE TIMES (Best historical fiction in 2018)

“Powerful, intense and beautiful” HISTORICAL NOVEL REVIEW

“This tense, evocative, richly-imagined novel conjures the voices of a strange time and place, and makes them universal” EMMA DARWIN

“Syson brings history alive” THE OBSERVER

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