Romanceros
Bob Beagrie, Drunk Muse Press, £10

A FRACTURED Europe, a global financial crash with the working classes hit hardest, populists offering easy answers to complex problems and the resultant fascism off on its jackbooted march. I sometimes — no, make that often — shake my head and wonder if we’ll ever learn from history. We are of course on territory here that’s more than familiar to anyone on the left with even a passing regard for our shared heritage.

Bob Beagrie’s new collection is the latest work on the brutal Spanish civil war, a theatre effectively used by Hitler to test out troops and tactics for the coming much larger conflict. But the scale of any war can surely mean little when you’re the person trying to stay away from the bombs and bullets on the front line — just ask one Eric Arthur Blair, or indeed any of the British volunteers who made up the 16th Battalion of the XV International Brigade — many paying the ultimate price of bravely, but eventually fruitlessly, fighting the fascists.

This book comes on the heels of The Balled Of Johnny Longstaff, a much heralded album by Beagrie’s excellent Teesside folk contemporaries The Young Uns. Indeed the same man helped with research for both projects — step forward Tony Fox, a devoted local historian with a huge amount of knowledge and interest in the conflict.