FIGHTING FOR FRANCO

by Judith Keene
Continuum/Leicester University Press, £25, pp. 310, ISBN 0718501268

How many more books on the Spanish civil war is Professor Paul Preston proposing to write? We have already had 14, either wholly or in part about the war, written or edited by him. They include his magisterial, if relentlessly critical, biography of Franco (his wife, aka Gabrielle Ashford Hodges, then followed with her own book on Franco) and, most recently, Comrades, concerned with some of the principal figures of the war, both Republican and Nationalist. Students of Professor Preston will know that his heart is usually worn pretty visibly on his sleeve, but this latest book, consisting of portraits of four women, two from each side in the war, is a model of even-handedness and a worthy tribute to all of them.

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