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The Spanish Civil War is a book by Hugh Thomas; it provides a scholarly historiographic account of the Spanish Civil War. The work, written since 1957, was first published in 1961: simultaneously in the United Kingdom by Eyre & Spottiswoode and in the United States by Harpers'. Upon release it received rather positive reviews; it won the Somerset Maugham Prize in 1962 and during the following few years was translated and published in Portugal, France, Germany, Denmark and Italy. Despite initial approving reviews, in Francoist Spain the book received unfavorable treatment and was never published.
Historiography so far
First serious interpretative works on the Spanish civil war started to appear when the conflict was still ongoing (Rudolf Rocker 1937, Frantisek Jellinek 1938). Afterwards in Francoist Spain numerous books went to print, but they largely adhered to propagandistic format; the best and the most detailed one was also plagued by censorship limitations (Joaquín Arrarás, 1940–1943). The analysis by Gerald Brennan covered causes rather than the war itself (1943). Until the mid-1950s no acclaimed account of the Spanish civil war has been published. Beyond Spain there were merely numerous highly personal accounts (e.g. Julió Álvarez del Vayo 1940), partisan party narratives (e.g. Herbert Matthews 1958) or works which focused on some particular dimensions of the war (e.g. Patricia van der Esch 1951, David Cattell 1954[8]). In 1953 Brennan declined the proposal to write a broader work[9] and suggested to Raymond Carr – who got interested in Spain only in the early 1950s - that he tries himself. The latter indeed started to reflect upon the matter, but his considerations bore fruit much later. Herbert Southworth remained active in broad public debate rather than in academia and was yet to start writing his most famous work (1963). Also Pierre Broué and Émile Témime were about to commence work on their large, Trotskyism-flavoured book, to be published in 1961. Burnett Bolloten was merely collecting data, gathered in his later book (also 1961). Gabriel Jackson was a young college teacher and has not even started working on his account, which appeared in the mid-1960s.
Author
In the late 1950s Thomas was in his mid-20s. The Cambridge graduate, former employee of the Foreign Office and member of the British delegation to the UN Disarmament Commission, he was released at his own request due to unease with the policies he was asked to promote. In the summer of 1956 he tried his hand in literature publishing a barely noticed novel on futilities of diplomatic life, The World Game. In 1957 he co-authored a 33-page brochure issued by the Fabian Society, titled Disarmament – The Way Ahead. Disarmament remained "one of his main areas of interest". Together with Philip Noel-Baker he considered setting up a National Disarmament League; as director of Disarmament Campaign by United Nations Association he took part in various conferences, also at a meeting of the British-Soviet Friendship Society. He admitted left-wing sympathies, possibly bordering socialism. Some publicity given to his clash with the Foreign Office made him an attractive catch for the Labour Party; he unsuccessfully stood as parliamentary candidate in 1957-1958 for Ruislip and Northwood. His job at the time was a brief stint as a lecturer at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. Some sources claim that in 1955 Thomas visited Spain for the first time and began his research on the civil war, yet in his Introduction, dwelling on origins of the book, he did not mention such an episode. At the time Thomas did not know any Spanish and though historian by education, he has not published a single historiographic work. A contemporary scholar claims that "in the late 1950s Thomas was casting around for the best use of his talents".
(Wikipedia)