Antony Beevor has written fine accounts of the battles of Stalingrad, Berlin and Normandy. However this book must rank as his masterpiece. It is a gripping narrative history of the Spanish Civil War, updated from an earlier account he wrote, with new material from former Soviet and other sources. At just over 450 pages (excluding references and notes) it is a substantial volume, but still only half the length of the Spanish language version of the work.

The author is clearly sympathetic to the cause of the Spanish Republic, but this does not stop him from being scathing about its failings, particularly its military ones. He is clear-sighted also about the atrocities of the Republicans but these pale in comparison with those of the Francoists, which were systematic and often chilling in their brutality. In one instance an American journalist was present when a fascist officer handed over to his troops two young girls. The officer “told him calmly that they would not survive more than four hours” (p. 92).

The Spanish Civil War prefigured the cataclysmic struggle of the Second World War, both in terms of the ideological conflicts and as well as the pitiless violence. Yet it is also a conflict which is important to understand in its own terms and for its influence on contemporary Spain and Europe. This is something that Beevor manages seemingly effortlessly. It is a great work of narrative history.

Lucrezia Borgia

This is a startlingly dull biography of one of history’s most infamous families, its limitations perhaps a product of the fact that Christopher Hibbert was working on this towards the end of his life.

There is a welcome focus in the book on the unfairly maligned Lucrezia, and the author illustrates how she was a pawn in the power-plays of her pope father, Rodrigo, and brother, Cesare. The book details her many horrific experiences, including the murder of her husband, probably by her brother Cesare, and effectively refutes the myth of her monstrousness

Cesare was no more dastardly than his contemporaries, and in many ways more effective, as Machevelli’s account indicates. But he was still a pretty nasty character. He was a murderer and a rapist, keeping, for example, Caterina Sforza-Riario, ruler of Imola and Forli, as a sexual slave for weeks after sacking her cities. Tiring of her after a while he consigned her to the dungeons. Hibbert treats the coarse humoured contemporary accounts of the “willingness” of Caterina at face value, rather than consider in any great depth the invidious nature of Caterina’s position, and what this says about Cesare.

Casere Borgia

Time and again Hibbert seems more interested the clothes that the Borgias wore rather than the psychology of the family and the politics, papal and secular, that drove them. On the positive side it is a short book and does provide a relatively concise overview of the careers of this family. Still considering the potential of the source material it is a disappointing book, and probably unrepresentative of the author.