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PORTRAIT OF SPAIN by Thomas F.- Ed. McCann

PORTRAIT OF SPAIN

By

Pub Date: June 17th, 1963
Publisher: Knopf

The tapestry of Spain, its paradoxes and passions, its enchantments and curses, shimmers through these sizeable selections from Anglo-American accounts during the 19th and 20th centuries. Among the best are the travel journals of Rose Macauley (an evocative Costa Brava tour), Sacheverell Sitwell (connoisseurship in Old Castile), Washington Irving (a valentine to the Alhambra), Gerald Brennan (a subtle, sad expose on the murder of Garcia Lorca), MacKinley Helm (people and peccadillos in Salamanca), Walter Starkie (a glittery glimpse of Gypsy life- the last Grand Days), and Honor Tracy (a frank, funny fling through the sherry country). The best, however, are the most famous: Hemingway's masterful, if mannered, tribute to toreros Joselito and Belmonte, and Orwell's moving testament to Catalonia and the treason of Left and Right during the ill-fated Civil War.