Author Archive for Helen Graham

The History and Mystery of a Photograph

May 18, 2023
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The History and Mystery of a Photograph

This photograph of Lincoln brigaders Bill Aalto, Alex Kunslich and Irv Goff, with a Spanish comrade, depicts something rare, possibly unique. But unfortunately, all physical copies of it are lost—or, at least, their whereabouts are unknown.
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Why Do So Many Historians Fail to Understand the War in Spain?

November 14, 2020
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Why Do So Many Historians Fail to Understand the War in Spain?

The war of 1936-39 in Spain had much in common with the many other conflicts being waged in societies across Europe after the First World War, as those who sought to maintain old hierarchies clashed with those striving for change. Yet the evident similarity is one that English-speaking historians often seem oblivious to. What...
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The wars of Bill Aalto: Guerrilla soldier in Spain, 1937-39

March 21, 2014
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The wars of Bill Aalto: Guerrilla soldier in Spain, 1937-39

Bill Aalto’s brief, intense life (1915-1958) spanned the turbulent mid-20th century. He was an intelligent, street-wise Finnish-American boy from New York who in Spain became a Republican guerrilla fighter and a poet. After Spain, he found himself burned, betrayed, and persecuted. Aalto’s is one of five lives featured in Helen Graham’s new book.
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A war for our times: The Spanish conflict in 21st-century perspective

September 14, 2012
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A war for our times: The Spanish conflict in 21st-century perspective

The civil war in Spain stands at a crossroads in Europe’s “dark twentieth century”: that is, in the story of how, not so long ago, the mass killing of civilians became the brutal medium through which European societies came to terms with structure-shattering forms of change. The Spanish conflict was all about this. But...
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Review: A British nurse in Spain

July 8, 2012
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Review: A British nurse in Spain

Patience Darton’s life is an encapsulation of some of the 20th century’s most critical moments. Without an ounce of didacticism, her life shows the reader the abiding truth of “the personal is political.” No didacticism then, just a truth rendered with grace and melancholy (wrenching understatement is Patience’s forte) and delivered in a way...
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