September 2, 2014 archive

The Spanish Civil War by Stanley Payne

All civil wars and revolutions are confused in their narrative accounts, but the Spanish Civil War is even more confusing than the French Revolution. Who, exactly, was rebelling against whom? The Leftists were supposedly the “revolutionaries,” but they actually supported the Republic. Franco’s Nationalists were the “counterrevolutionaries,” but they were dedicated to overthrowing the Republic. …

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The Mission Song by John Le Carre

In this book Le Carre succeeds in doing what he failed to do in Tinker Tailor: creating characters that the reader actually cares about, as a well as a plot involving a covert operation whose outcome is not merely a an academic move in a geopolitical chess game. I identify in some ways with the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/09/02/the-mission-song-by-john-le-carre/