Ventures into the Spanish past

The complex plots of C. J. Sansom’s novel revolve around the adventures in Spain during the civil war and its aftermath of three old boys of a fictional public school. Harry Brett comes from an army family, prospers at school and is elected a fellow of a Cambridge college. Bernie Piper is a working-class scholarship boy who regards public schools as machines for grinding out compliant servants of bourgeois capitalism. Leaving in disgust, he joins the Communist party, volunteers for the International Brigades and is presumed killed at the battle of Jarama in February 1937. Sandy Forsyth, son of a bishop, detests school as restricting his activities on the racetracks and in London brothels. Fully aware of the brutal repression of the Francoist regime, his motto is ‘When in Rome do as the Romans do’ and he prospers as a shady businessman in a corrupt society.

British intelligence services in Spain were engaged, as we now know, in bribing Spanish generals to keep Spain from becoming Hitler’s ally in the second world war.