Defence of Madrid
A Classic Account of the Spanish Civil War

Geoffrey Cox

Key Points

• Reprint of a classic Left Book Club book on the Spanish Civil War.
• Cox was the News Chronicle correspondent in Madrid, Oct-Dec, 1936.
• Foreword by Paul Preston of the London School of Economics.

Book

Goodies and baddies take some sorting out in this tale of the siege of Madrid by Franco's right-wing forces supported by the Nazis and the fascist regime of Mussolini (the 'rebels'), against the civilian population and its government representatives, just elected, who happened to be left-wing. Once sorted, Cox's account of the city under attack, in one of the twentieth century's first urban wars, has all too many echoes today. This new edition, with an introduction and selection of historical photographs, as well as samples of Cox's journalism from the front, will confirm its position as one of the classics of twentieth-century reportage. It is being published for the 70th anniversary of the event.

'a penetrating understanding of people ... a remarkable and gifted New Zealander ... a fine precursor of what [work] was to come' – NZ Books

Contents

Foreword Paul Preston
Introduction Michael O'Shaugnessy
1 Retrest
2 Left Defeat
3 'Failing a Miracle'
4 The People's Army
5 Inside Madrid
6 Fifth Column
7 At the Gates
8 Friday Afternoon
9 Friday Night
10 City Battlefield
11 'No Passeran'
12 Arms and the Men
13 Madrid Sunday
14 Check
15 City at War
16 Internationale
17 People in Arms
18 Theatre of War
19 The First Failure
20 Air Attack
21 Terror by Day
22 Terror by Night
23 Morale
24 Comedy
25 'Bleeding to Death'
26 International Column
27 Madrid under Fire
28 Left Vanguard
29 Army of the Future
30 Spies
31 Atrocities
32 Two Leaders
33 Militia
34 Invasion
35 Tragedy
36 Companero
37 'Salud'
37 The Smashing of a Myth

Author

Geoffrey Cox is a New Zealand Rhodes Scholar who chose to be a journalist rather than an academic. He made the decision in the mid 1930s, and soon became a foreign correspondent reporting from Berlin on the establishment of the Nazi regime, which he recalled in his book Eyewitness: A Memoir of Europe in the 1930s. Spain followed. After World War II, he went on to found Independent Television's News at Ten. He now lives in Surrey in England.

Publication details

History, Spanish Civil War
Paperback, 230 x 150 mm, 216 pp, ISBN-10 1 877372 38 2,
ISBN-13 978 1 877372 38 4, $39.95
Publication Date: November 2006