George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, John Dos Passos, Felicia Browne, John Cornford, Stephen Spender? These were just some of the talented, committed and adventure-hungry men and women who travelled to Spain to join the struggle against General Franco's fascist rebellion. Through their personal letters, diaries and memoirs, David Boyd Haycock brings the experiences of these remarkable individuals ? as well as many lesser-known but equally compelling figures ? stunningly to life. He describes the mingled excitement and trepidation with which they set out for Spain, and the sheer relief that here at last was a chance to do something against the calamitous threat posed by Fascism. He evokes the glamour and the terror of wartime Barcelona, as Stalin's security forces lethally stifled all dissent and imposed Party orthodoxy. And he charts the painful disillusionment of a generation of men and women as they came to understand their impotence in the face of greater forces.