HELL AND GOOD COMPANY

The remarkable story of the Spanish Civil War as seen through the eyes of the reporters, writers, artists, doctors and nurses who witnessed it. The War (1936-39) inspired and haunted an extraordinary number of exceptional artists and writers including Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Martha Gellhorn, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell and John Dos Passos. The idealism of the cause, defending democracy from Fascism at a time when Europe was darkening towards another World War, and the brutality of the conflict drew from them some of their best work - Guernica, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Homage to Catalonia, The Spanish Earth. The war spurred breakthroughs in military and medical technology as well - new aircraft, weapons, tactics and strategy all emerged. Indiscriminate destruction, raining from the sky, became a dreaded reality for the first time. Progress also arose from the horror - the doctors and nurses who volunteered to serve with the Spanish defenders devised major advances in battlefield surgery and frontline blood transfusion. In many ways the war served as a test bed for World War Two and for the entire 20th century. From the life of John James Audubon to the invention of the atomic bomb, readers have relied on Richard Rhodes to distil and dramatize crucial moments in history. Now he takes us into the battlefields and bomb shelters, into the studios of artists, the crowded wards of war hospitals and into the hearts and minds of a rich cast of characters to show how the ideological, aesthetic and technological developments that emerged in Spain changed the world for ever. 16 pages of plates, 302pp.