A Traveller's Companion to Madrid

About this book

Hugh Thomas, best known for his authoritative analysis of the Spanish Civil War, has chosen from diaries, letters, memoirs and novels ranging across five centuries of Madrid’s history.

The anthology brilliantly evokes the drama and personalities of the past by drawing on eyewitness accounts and commentaries from both visitors and inhabitants including Beaumarchais, Beckford, Luis Buñuel, Alexandre Dumas, Goya, Victor Hugo, Hemingway, Napoleon and scores of others.

Includes: the Duke of Wellington walking in the shady Paseo del Prado; the Earl of Clarendon on 17th-century bullfights; Salvador Dalaí playing a surrealist joke on a snooty barman at the Ritz; Rubens in the Alcázar; Manet at the Prado, generals and anarchists in the Puerta del Sol; Casanova and Trotsky in prison.