The face of Spain

Article number 10125617

‘No living writer knows Spain as well as Mr Brenan does,’ V.S. Pritchett once said, ‘and none has written about Spanish life, literature and history so searchingly.’ The Face of Spain, Brenan’s classic travel book, gives us both a bird’s-eye view of life in Spain under Franco in 1949 and insights into a Spain and its people that are timeless and eternal. He wrote it for the first-time visitor as well as for the confirmed Hispanophile, providing a blend of history, anecdotes and digressions – on Baroque art, on the thriving black market, on his search for Lorca’s grave in Granada, on wines, waiters and churches – that adds up to an account richly redolent with the flavours of Spain. ‘The ideal travel book would combine the fresh vision of the tourist with the experience of the oldest inhabitant. Such a combination hardly ever occurs... Mr Brenan has achieved this miraculous conjunction of the old and the new eye, of familiarity and surprise’ – Harold Nicolson in the Observer. CONTENTS Introduction by John Wolfers Preface Preface to the Penguin Edition Madrid Cordova Hill Towns of Andalusia Málaga Churriana Granada Cordova and the Sierra Morena La Mancha Badajoz Mérida Talavera and Toledo Aranjuez and Madrid