Hotel Florida review a 'wrenchingly sad' account of love and bravery in the Spanish civil war

Describing the civil war through the lives of three famous couples including Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn proves inspired

"Me, I am going to Spain with the boys," Martha Gellhorn told a friend in 1937. "I don't know who the boys are, but I am going with them." In fact, she knew precisely who they were and she knew that Ernest Hemingway was among them. Soon, he would be a hero of the republican cause, with Gellhorn as his comrade-in-arms. The grubby writer and the leggy blonde quickly became symbols of all that was brave and true in the Spanish bloodbath.

"Scrooby" and "Mooky" were not the only lovers to come together amid the bombs and corpses. American biographer Amanda Vaill has had the inspired idea of telling the story of the Spanish civil war through the eyes of three couples: Hemingway and Gellhorn, the Hungarian and German photographers Robert Capa and Gerda Taro and the Spanish head of press censorship (and writer in the making) Arturo Barea and his lover, the Austrian socialist intellectual Ilse Kulcsar.

Continue reading...