This book is a visual record of the tragedy of the Spanish Civil Ear, published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of fighting in 1936, and comprises a wide variety of dramatic pictorial material, both black-and-white and colour, some of which has rarely or never been reproduced before. It follows, with the help of chronologies, the main course of events in Spain from 1936 to the crushing disillusionment of the Republican defeat in 1939, focussing in on particular aspects of the war. The international nature of the conflict, discussed by Raymond Carr in his introduction, is especially featured, and the book includes unfamiliar material from the archives of the International Brigades among photographs, posters, propaganda material and ephemera of all kinds from sources inside and outside Spain. Together, the images portray the military, political and social history of the war, but they also evoke a sense of the war, but they also evoke a sens of the idealistic zeal and extraordinary creative energy of the period.