Why does the Spanish civil war still continue to attract so much popular and scholarly attention at the end of the twentieth century - a century of total war, two world wars and hundreds of other wars besides? The partial answer - as Fearghal McGarry intimates in his epilogue - is as true for Ireland as it is for most other countries: the propensity for political and cultural circumstances to transform the recollection of historical events.
In the last years of the century, the Spanish civil war is perceived less as that than as a conflict between Left and Right - and one where the "the Left " has had frequent opportunities to celebrate in ballad and international commemoration. Although three times as many Irishmen fought for Nationalist Spain as for the Republic, Dr McGarry asks why there are no Irish memorials to the pro-Franco Irish Brigade which was led by Eoin O'Duffy?
This is a question not so easily answered, but the author is less interested in providing a full answer than in writing what is undoubtedly the most scholarly, the most authoritative, the most detailed and the most widely researched account of Ireland and the Spanish Civil War to date.
This is a work, however, not without flaws. Some critics may argue that the text remains too thesis-like and that its structure is more a collection of parallel studies, which make for unnecessary repetition, than an integrated, traditional narrative-style book. On the contrary - the present structure has its strengths, even if the placing of the section on "diplomatic policy " at the end is hard to justify by any historical standard.
Dr McGarry divides his text into three parts: a study of the volunteers to both sides; an analysis of interest groups, including Republican and Socialist, religious and party political; and diplomatic policy.
In a fluent and economical style, the author analyses the respective roles of a range of characters and organisations, some of which, if invented by a dramatist, would not be deemed credible or authentic. Yet it is a constant strength of this study that the author retains control of his material and does not yield to caricature.
The journals of the rector of the Irish College in Salamanca, Father Alexander J. McCabe, provide a most valuable historical source and an insight into the mind of a man who never imbibed the rhetoric of the Franco side. That is hardly surprising as the same Irish College was commandeered by the Franco side and became the headquarters of the German propaganda unit during the course of the war. (He told me how, most early mornings, he used to hear from his room the sound of the firing squads and the final coup de grace as Franco's forces mass-executed their opponents).
Today we are only aware of the journal and the letters of McCabe. What we are not privy to are the annual oral briefings McCabe gave the hierarchy in Maynooth during his annual leave. But one way or the other, as Dr McGarry argues, the Catholic hierarchy - despite initial enthusiasm - did not embrace the zealots in the Irish Christian Front leadership who, ironically, had the spending of most of the Mass-door collection conducted by the bishops for relief in Spain.
The hierarchy supped with a long spoon, and McCabe had a lot to do with the making of that policy. De Valera did not cave in to extremism either inside or outside his party when normal rational patterns of debate appear to have deserted many people - as this exchange in the Athy UDC illustrates:
Chairman: "We will take this resolution as adopted unanimously."
Mr T. Carberry: "I am dissenting."
Mrs Doyle: "Are you a communist?"
This is a book that is well worth buying. In a second edition, the author will benefit from a greater familiarity with relevant historical work done in "outlying" universities.
Dermot Keogh is Professor of History at University College Cork. His most recent book is Jews in 20th Century Ireland: Anti Semitism, Refugees and the Holocaust