A poignant memoir of the Spanish Civil War - but where is Miranda? wonders Griselda Heppel
Erm.... Because publication of my new children's book, The Fall of a Sparrow , has been, cough, delayed by yet another month, I thought I'd write about what I’m reading rather than what I've written. My book club’s choice for May is a slim memoir of life in Churriana, a village near Malaga, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. It has left me with mixed feelings. Death's Other Kingdom by Gamel Woolsey Death’s Other Kingdom is by Gamel Woolsey, who I’d never heard of, though I should have done. She and her husband, Gerald Brenan, were writers on the fringe of the Bloomsbury group, with all its accompanying connotations of literary brilliance and complicated relationships. In 1936 their idyllic life in southern Spain was shattered by the uprising of the Fascists against the elected government, and this memoir is a beautifully written, poignant account of what happened. First published in 1939, it contrasts the rich colours and warmth of Mediterranean life and the c...