Gerald Brenan (Gerald Edward Fitzgerald Brenan) Biography

British writer on Spain and Spanish culture, born in Malta, educated at Radley College. Following distinguished service in the First World War, he travelled to Spain in 1919 with the intention of becoming a writer; South from Granada (1957) is his retrospective account of this period. With the exception of an interlude in London during which he wrote and published fiction under the pseudonym ‘George Beaton’, he spent most of his life from the early 1930s onward in Malaga. The Spanish Labyrinth (1943) formed a penetrating survey of the cultural and historical contexts of the Spanish Civil War. The Face of Spain (1950), a richly digressive and humanely perceptive view of conditions under General Franco, confirmed his reputation as the most authoritative British writer on modern Spain. His other works include The Literature of the Spanish People (1953), a critical history, and the autobiographies A Life of One's Own (1962) and Personal Record (1974). There is a biography, Gerald Brenan: The Interior Castle (1992), by Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy.