Twenty-one-year-old Lucy is frustrated with her constrained life in Hertfordshire, teaching and keeping house for her domineering father. But she is happy to be living next door to Tom and Jamie, two brothers she has known since childhood, and whom she loves equally. Her life is turned upside down when, in 1936, Tom decides he […]
Review: Acts of Love and War by Maggie Brookes
Judith Allnatt reviews Acts of Love and War by Maggie Brookes, a book set during the Spanish Civil War which “cannot fail to move the reader.” Lucy Nicholson has loved the Murray brothers, Tom and Jamie, ever since they moved next door when she was only six years old. Now in their 20s, with the […]
Acts of Love and War by Maggie Brookes
It’s 1936 and there’s civil war in Spain, a world on the brink of chaos. 21-year-old Lucy feels content with her life in Hertfordshire, not least because she lives next door to Tom and Jamie, two very different brothers for whom she has equally great affection. But her comfortable life is turned upside down when […]
The Spanish Civil War: a war against children
“Every war is a war against children,” Eglantyne Jebb, the founder of Save the Children said. This was particularly true during the Spanish Civil War, as Maggie Brookes explains. When the bombing of Madrid by Franco‘s fascists began in the autumn and winter of 1936, women scrambled aboard trains and took their children north to […]