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Abstract
After working in the Foreign Office, standing unsuccessfully as a Labour parliamentary candidate and briefly lecturing at Sandhurst, Hugh Thomas tried his hand as a novelist but found his metier when he accepted an invitation to write a history of the Spanish Civil War. For its colourful style and immense scholarship, it was hailed as a classic and opened the way many equally readable works on Cuba, Mexico and the Spanish Empire. After ten years as Professor of History at the University of Reading, he became one of Thatcher's advisers and was ennobled as Lord Thomas of Swynnerton.
Notes
1 Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1961).
2 I am grateful to Inigo Thomas who shared with me Hugh's own account of this period.
3 See letters of Nancy Mitford to Hugh Thomas, 11 July 1954 & 18 November 1955, and to Lady Redesdale, 11 April 1955, in Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford, ed. Charlotte Mosley (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1993), 327, 340, 345.
4 Hugh Thomas, Suez (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 7, 13, 141, 223.
5 Letter of Inigo Thomas to Paul Preston, 21 & 25 May 2017.
6 Hugh Thomas, ‘The Establishment and Society’, in The Establishment: A Symposium, ed. Hugh Thomas (London: Anthony Blond, 1959), 9–20 (pp. 15, 20).
7 Email correspondence of Paul Preston with Hamish MacGibbon, and Thomas’ letter to Hamish MacGibbon of 27 February 2010. See also Boris Volodarsky, Stalin's Agent: The Life and Death of Alexander Orlov (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2015), 117–18, 493.
8 Michael Alpert, ‘Foreword’ to Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, Anniversary edition, 2 vols (London: Folio Society, 2014), I, xvii–xxi.
9 Douglas Jerrold, Georgian Adventure (London: Right Book Club, 1937), 367–74.
10 Thomas, ‘Preface’, in The Spanish Civil War, xix–xxii (p. xxi).
11 Claude Cockburn, ‘International Battlefield’, The Sunday Telegraph, 30 April 1961.
12 Quotations from the reviews by Cyril Connolly and Michael Foot are as cited on the back cover of the 2nd and subsequent editions of Thomas, The Spanish Civil War.
13 David Marquand, ‘Lessons of the Spanish Civil War’, The Guardian, 27 April 1961.
14 Peter Kemp, ‘Spain and the Myth that Survives’, The Daily Telegraph, 27 April 1961.
15 Vernon Richards, Lessons of the Spanish Revolution (London: Freedom Press, 1972), 220; see also Richards, ‘July 19, 1936: Republic or Revolution?, Anarchy, 1:5 (1961), 129–36.
16 Salvador de Madariaga, ‘The Spanish Civil War’, The Contemporary Review, 1 June 1961, 325–36.
17 Ángel Palerm, letter to the Editor, The Americas, 20:1 (October 1962), 212–20; for the comments by Thomas, see his The Spanish Civil War, 6 & 8.
18 Hugh Thomas, letter to the Editor, The Americas, 20:1 (July 1963), 89–92. The comments about Calvo Sotelo and Dolores Ibárruri could still be seen in Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, 2nd ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965), 27 & 29; The Spanish Civil War, 3rd ed. (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1977); and in The Spanish Civil War, 4th ed. (London: Penguin, 2003), 7 & 9.
19 Raymond Carr, ‘The Graveyard of Ideals’, The Observer, 30 April 1961.
20 For an example, see María Jesús González Hernández, Raymond Carr: The Curiosity of the Fox, trans. Nigel Griffin (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press/Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies, 2013), 308–09.
21 Albert Forment, José Martínez: la epopeya de Ruedo Ibérico (Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 2000), 188–89, 198–200.
22 Southworth to Allen, 29 January 1964, in the Southworth Papers, Centro de Documentación del Bombardeo de Gernika, Gernika; Forment, José Martínez, 223–24.
23 González Hernández, Raymond Carr, trans. Griffin, 157, 409.
24 Forment, José Martínez, 230.
25 Francisco Franco Salgado-Araujo, Mis conversaciones privadas con Franco (Barcelona: Editorial Planeta, 1976), 375–76, 484–85, 494, 504, 507.
26 Ricardo de la Cierva, Cien libros básicos sobre la guerra de España (Madrid: Publicaciones Españolas, 1966), 121–36; for ‘worse was to follow’, see Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, 2nd ed., 703.
27 Ricardo de la Cierva, ‘El vademecum de los papanatas’, Nueva Historia (febrero 1977), 102.
28 Letter of Thomas to Preston, 8 May 1975.
29 Southworth, in a letter to Jay Allen, 18 November 1964, Southworth Papers. Southworth's help is acknowledged in The Spanish Civil War, 2nd ed., 15.
30 Letter of Southworth to Allen, 2 January 1964, Southworth Papers.
31 Letter of Allen to Southworth, 6 January 1964, Southworth Papers.
32 Letter of Southworth to Allen, 23 January 1965, Southworth Papers.
33 Letter of Southworth to Allen, 21 December1965, Southworth Papers.
34 González Hernández, Raymond Carr, trans. Griffin, 164, 410.
35 Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, 1961 edition, 423; 1965 edition, 537; 1977 edition, 630–31; 2003 edition, 612–13.
36 Herbert Rutledge Southworth, La Destruction de Guernica: journalisme, diplomatie, propagande et histoire (Paris: Ruedo Ibérico, 1975), 342, n. 106.
37 Southworth, La Destruction de Guernica, 329; letter from Hugh Thomas to Preston, 8 May 1975.
38 See Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, 1961 edition, 419; 1965 edition, 537. In the 1977 edition, he amended this to ‘Perhaps 1,000 died’ (625, n. 2). In the fourth edition of 2003, this became: ‘[m]any people, perhaps as many as a thousand, were killed, though subsequent events make it impossible to be quite certain how many’ (607).
39 Hugh Thomas, ‘Heinkels over Guernica’, Times Literary Supplement, 11 April 1975.
40 The original review appeared in the Times Literary Supplement on 11 April 1975 and the subsequent correspondence in TLS on 13 and 20 June 1975.
41 See Herbert R. Southworth, Conspiracy and the Spanish Civil War: The Brainwashing of Francisco Franco, Routledge/Cañada Blanch Studies on Contemporary Spain 3 (London: Routledge, 2002), 54–57. For the offending comment, see Southworth, La Destruction de Guernica, 464; and Herbert Rutledge Southworth, La destrucción de Guernica: periodismo, diplomacia, propaganda e historia (Paris: Ruedo Ibérico, 1977), 475.
42 Southworth, La Destruction de Guernica, 464 and Southworth, La destrucción de Guernica, 475.
43 Xabier Irujo, El Guernica de Richthofen: un ensayo de bombardeo de terror (Guernica/Lumo: Guernicako Bakearen Museoa Fundazioa, 2012), 257–301.
44 Southworth, letter in TLS, 13 June 1975.
45 Letter from Preston to Thomas, 13 May 1975; see also Thomas’ reply to Southworth, TLS, 20 June 1975; printed in an abbreviated form, so without the last sentence quoted here.
46 Southworth, Conspiracy and the Spanish Civil War, 1–5.
47 Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, 1961 edition, 108, n. 1; Southworth, Conspiracy and the Spanish Civil War, 51–53.
48 Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, 1965 edition, 150, n. 2.
49 Paul Preston, Franco: A Biography (London: HarperCollins, 1993).
50 Hugh Thomas, Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1971).
51 Quoted from the original proposal he wrote for his book An Unfinished History of the World.
52 See Hugh Thomas, An Unfinished History of the World (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1979); see the review by Tom Nairn, ‘Mrs Thatcher's Spengler’, London Review of Books, 24 January 1980.
53 Daily Mail, 23 & 26 November 1976.
54 See Edward Countryman, letter to the editor, The Guardian, 25 June 1983.
55 Hugh Thomas, Our Place in the World (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1983), 8.
56 Thomas, notes on ‘The Renewal of Britain’, 25 June 1979, Thatcher MSS (Churchill Archive Centre): THCR 5/1/4/3/2.
57 14 May 1979, Thatcher MSS (Churchill Archive Centre): THCR 2/6/2/38; emphasis in the original.
58 See letter from her private secretary Ian Gow, 16 July 1979, Thatcher MSS (Churchill Archive Centre): THCR 2/6/2/170-2.
59 Thomas, ‘Gibraltar’, 12 December 1979, TNA PREM19/769 f129.
60 Thomas, report, 3 July 1980, Thatcher MSS (Churchill Archive Centre): THCR 2/11/3/1 part 1 f101.
61 See The Observer, 6 November 1983.
62 Thomas, Minutes, 15 April 1982, THCR 1/13/26 f32; 16 April 1982, THCR 1/13/26 f31.
63 Thomas to Thatcher, ‘A Future Settlement in the Falklands Crisis’, 5 May 1982, TNA, PREM 19/624/f23; Minutes to Thatcher, 6 May 1982, THCR 1/13/26 f22; 7 May 1982, THCR 1/13/26 f10; 11 May 1982, THCR 1/13/26 f87; 13 May 1982, THCR 1/13/26 f9 and THCR 1/13/26 f10; 17 May 1982, TNA PREM19/648 f150. See also The Guardian, 21 August 1983.
64 Letter from Thomas to Thatcher, 16 June 1982, THCR 1/13/27 f174.
65 Hugh Thomas, Armed Truce: The Beginnings of the Cold War (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1986), 17–19.
66 See press release from Liberal Democrat Party, 17 November 1997; Anthony Bevins, ‘Europhile Defects from Tories to Lib-Dems’, The Independent, 18 November 1997; The Times, 18 November 1997.
67 9 June 1999, Hansard, House of Lords Debates.
68 Hugh Thomas, The Conquest of Mexico (London: Hutchinson, 1993). For the reviews cited, see J. H. Elliott, ‘Decoding the Caesar of Mexico’, The Times, 28 October 1993; Geoffrey Parker, The Spectator, 5 March 1994; Frank McLynn, ‘Epic Thuggery’, New Statesman, 12 November 1993.
69 Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870 (London: Picador, 1997). For the review cited, see Felipe Fernández Armesto, ‘Of Human Bondage’, The Sunday Times, 23 November 1997. For other reviews, see: Ronald Segal, ‘Irons in the Fire’, The Observer, 23 November 1997; Fred D’Aguiar, ‘The Black Man's Burden’, The Guardian, 27 November 1997; Leslie Mitchell, ‘All Guilty, Some More Than Others’, The Spectator, 29 November 1997.
70 Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003). See the review by Paul Kennedy, ‘Conquerors and Missionaries’, New York Times, 25 July 2004. For other reviews, see: Frank McLynn, ‘Conquistadors, Saints and Psychopaths’, The Independent, 9 February 2004; Jonathan Keates, ‘Tarnished Heroes, But Still Heroic’, The Spectator, 6 December 2003.
71 Reviewed by Juan Eloy Gelabert, ‘España antes de tiempo’, Revista de Libros, 87 (March 2004).
72 Hugh Thomas, The Golden Age: The Spanish Empire of Charles V (London: Allen Lane, 2010). For reviews, see: Ben Wilson, ‘When the Spanish Made Off with the Gold and the Llamas’, The Daily Telegraph, 19 February 2011; J H. Elliott, ‘The Reign of Spain’, The Guardian, 15 January 2011.
73 Hugh Thomas, World without End: The Global Empire of Philip II (London: Allen Lane, 2014).
74 Hugh Thomas, Quién es quién de los conquistadores, trad. Mª Dolores Udina, Berta Solé, Celia Filipetto & Laureano Domene (Barcelona: Salvat, 2001).
75 See Malcolm Deas, The Spectator, 19 July 2014. See, for other reviews: Ben Macintyre, ‘The Spanish Plan to Take China’, The Times, 19 July 2014; and Dominic Sandbrook, ‘Epic of Empire’, The Sunday Times, 27 July 2014.
76 See Inigo Thomas, ‘On Ladbroke Grove’, London Review of Books, 15 June 2017.
* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.