Arturo Barea

[2] His father died when he was four months old, so his mother, with four young children to support, worked as a laundress, washing clothes in the River Manzanares, while the family lived in a garret in the poor Lavapiés district of Madrid.

He was a member of the Socialist UGT (Unión General de Trabajadores) and helped found the Clerical Workers Union at the start of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931.

On the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in mid-1936 he organized a volunteer militia unit La Pluma (The Pen) of office workers fighting under the UGT.

As defeat for the Spanish Government loomed, this, allied to difficulties with the Communist party (he was not a member and therefore suspect), and a breakdown in his health, meant that he and his wife had to leave Spain.

From then until his death, Barea worked for the BBC's World Service Spanish section while contributing articles and reviews to various literary publications, as well as writing books.

[5] Barea spent the last ten years of his life living at Middle Lodge in Eaton Hastings, a house rented from Gavin Henderson, 2nd Baron Faringdon, of nearby Buscot Park.

Orwell, in his review of the trilogy said: "An excellent book … Señor Barea is one of the most valuable of the literary acquisitions that England has made as a result of Fascist persecution”.