Paul Preston | Arts Research

We Saw Spain Die: Foreign Correspondents in the Spanish Civil War

Wednesday 2 March 2016
Oxford University – Ciclo Madariaga

Speaker: Prof. Paul Preston
Introduced by: Diego Rubio (Junior Fellow, University of Oxford)

Time: 5:30pm
Place: Summer Common Room, Magdalen College, Oxford, OX1 4AU
Registration: http://goo.gl/forms/LaEZtlHCaa

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 alike. Despite difficult political, professional and personal circumstances 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 many 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. 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. Based on extensive diary material and personal correspondence, Mainly British and American, but also Russian and French, Paul Preston’s account tells of the courage and skill of these men and women.

. . Category: Archived Events . Tags: Ciclo Madariaga, Diego Rubio, foreign correspondents, Oxford University, Paul Preston, Spain, Spanish Civil War

LSE-CBC Literary Festival Discussion

Fact versus Fiction? The Spanish Civil War in the Literary Imagination

Speakers: Prof. Helen Graham (Royal Holloway) and Eduardo Mendoza (novelist)
Chair: Prof. Paul Preston
Date: Wednesday 24 February 2016
Time: 18.30 h.
Place: LSE, New Academic Building, Wolfson Theatre

LSE Literary Festival Discussion

Marking the 80th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War, a panel of prominent historians as well as one of Spain’s most important novelists will explore the effect of the war on the literary imagination from George Orwell to the present day and reflect on the challenges of incorporating real events into fiction.

Helen Graham is Professor of Spanish History at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her books include The Spanish Republic at War, The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction, and The War and its Shadow: Spain’s Civil War in Europe’s Long Twentieth Century. She is currently completing Lives at the Limit, a set of innovative, interlocking biographies of five lives from Europe’s dark mid-twentieth century, all of which were involved in the defence of the Spanish Republic and its defeat in 1939.

Eduardo Mendoza is a Spanish novelist, whose acclaimed works include The City of Marvels, No Word from Gurb, The Mystery of the Enchanted Crypt, The Olive Labyrinth, and An Englishman in Madrid. He studied Law and worked as an U.N. interpreter in the United States for nine years. Widely considered to be one of Spain’s leading contemporary novelists, he has won many literary prizes internationally.

For further information and tickets:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2016/02/LitFest20160224t1830vWT.aspx

. . Category: Archived Events . Tags: Eduardo Mendoza, George Orwell, Helen Graham, LSE, LSE Literary Festival, Paul Preston, Spanish Civil War

Tag Archives: Paul Preston

We Saw Spain Die: Foreign Correspondents in the Spanish Civil War, 2 March 2016

LSE Literary Festival Discussion: ‘Fact versus Fiction? The Spanish Civil War in the Literary Imagination’, 24 February 2016