South From Granada

Part autobiography, part travelogue, and wholly a tribute to the unspoilt beauty of southern Spain, Gerald Brenan's South from Granada includes an introduction by Chris Stewart, author of the bestselling Driving Over Lemons.

Between 1920 and 1934, Gerald Brenan lived in the remote Spanish village of Yegen, and this captivating account depicts his time there, vividly evoking the essence of his rural surroundings and the Spanish way of life before the Civil War. Here he portrays the landscapes, festivals and folk-lore of the Sierra Nevada, the rivalries, romances and courtship rituals, village customs, superstitions and characters. Fascinating details emerge, from cheap brothels to archaeological remains, along with visits from Brenan's friends from the Bloomsbury group—Lytton Strachey and Virginia Woolf among them.

Knowledgeable, elegant and sympathetic, this is a rich account of Spain's vanished past by a writer who spent much of his life in the country and became one of its most brilliant interpreters. Brenan is best known for The Spanish Labyrinth, a work of history on the background to the Spanish Civil War, and was awarded a CBE in 1982.