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Truth, it is said, is war’s first casualty. During the Spanish Civil War truth went topsy-turvy and did somersaults. Amanda Vaill views the war here through the prism of three couples: Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gelhorn, Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, and Arturo Barea and Ilsa Kulcsar. Hemingway is here in all his reflected macho glory, risking his life to get close to the front to earn $1,000 per story, an unheard-of sum during the Depression. Later in life Gelhorn granted interviews on condition that no question be asked about “Papa”, saying she “had no intention being the footnote to any other person’s life”. Capa and Taro were Jewish, anti-fascist, had been arrested in their own countries, and went to Spain to photograph the civil war. They would both die in wars, she in Spain and he in Indochina. While in Madrid they all stayed at the Hotel Florida, along with many other famous writers. If you like Spain, politics or just Hemingway, this is your book.
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