This is a bravura new interpretation of the course, causes and characters of the Spanish Civil War, which remains the twentieth century's bloodiest internal conflict. Any analysis of the war has always focused on victors and vanquished, but what of those who eschewed the struggle, those who stood apart from the carnage and chaos? Starting at the extreme right of chaos? Starting at the extreme right of the political-spectrum and moving across it to the extreme left, using the emblematic lives of nine key individuals, Preston builds up an astonishingly vivid picture of how the war came to pass, and how those who started, suffered and stopped it were coloured by the experience. Here are brilliant psychological profiles of the communist firebrand La Pasionaria, of the canny falangist Primo de Rivera, of the aloof intellectual Salvador de Madariaga, and of the enigma himself, Generalissimo Franco.