William Collins,464pp,£30
Already revered as the pre-eminent English historian of modern Spain, Paul Preston adds to his repertoire with this study focusing on six ideological fanatics who shaped Franco's systematic extermination of, ‘among them Gonzalo de Aguilera, an erudite, aristocratic landowner and cavalry officer who worked as a liaison officer with foreign media during the war. Aguilera was educated in England by Jesuits, passing through, I was startled to learn, my old school Wimbledon College before going on to Stonyhurst.’ According to Aguilera, the sewers in Spain's cities should have been ‘reserved for those who deserve them, the leaders of Spain, not the slave stock’. Another purveyor of poisonous propaganda was a priest named Juan Tusquets, who falsely accused ‘the moderate, piously Catholic President of the Republic, Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, of being both a freemason and a Jew.’ Preston's ‘revealing’ book is ‘based on profound knowledge but also shrewd human understanding. As well as exposing the pyschic underpinnings of the Spanish war it also helps us see the world war that followed for what it was: the continuation and culmination of long-brewing political and cultural pathologies.’
