Arturo Barea (1897-1957) was born in Badajoz and raised and educated in Madrid. For most of the Spanish Civil War, he acted as head of the Foreign Press and Censorship Bureau of the Republican Government in Madrid and was also the radio broadcaster who spoke as the 'Unknown Voice of Madrid'. Eventually forced out of Spain, he sought temporary asylum in France before crossing to England just before the outbreak of World War II. He and his wife Ilsa settled in Eaton Hastings near Faringdon in Berkshire. From 1940 until 1957 he transmitted a weekly broadcast for Spanish Radio to South America. He published novels and short stories as well as books of criticism, and his great autobiographical trilogy The Forging of a Rebel first appeared in English between 1941 and 1946.
Translator Ilsa Barea (1902-1973) was born and raised in Vienna, where she studied politics at Vienna University. In the 1930s she emigrated to Czechoslovakia for political reasons, before travelling to Spain in support of the Republican side early in the Civil War. She translated more than twenty books into English and lectured and broadcast in several languages. She died in Vienna while working on her autobiography.
