When dad took a second slice of cake or spent more time in the garden in the hot sun than mum thought wise, he would say: Don’t worry, Lily, you’re a long time dead. My dad was always cheerful and curious, always interested in what I was doing. He was proud when I became a […]
Monthly Archives: October 2022
GEORGE ORWELL AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
It was the day after Christmas in 1936 when George Orwell stepped off the train in Barcelona and followed his map to the recruiting office of the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista), where he volunteered to fight for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War. What little I knew about the war before we […]
THE ORIGINS OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
I knew nothing about the origins of the Spanish Civil War until we moved to Barcelona in 1984. General Franco had been dead nine years but his shadow loomed still over Spain like a cloud over the sun. My wife Valerie had been offered a position at the British Council in Barcelona and we rented […]
THE BIRTH OF CADAQUES
The birth of Cadaqués did not come about by chance. In the year 945, thirty years after the completion of the great monastery Sant Pere de Rodes, the wily abbot had a plan. With a party of broad-shouldered monks, the abbot set out on the sixty minute journey from the gates of the monastery, down […]