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Gerald Brenan's Yegen, a century on

Mark Nayler

English writer and Hispanophile Gerald Brenan moved into the Andalusian village of Yegen in January 1920. Brenan, then 25, had been demobilised from the British Army and had come to Spain searching for a tranquil spot in which to read and write. ... Brenan as a young man.SUR The writer lived in Yegen, on and off, until 1934 and wrote about his experiences in South From Granada (1957), a book that delights with its affectionate characterisation of 'pueblo' life as much as its descriptions of the ... Alpujarra's incomparable beauty. But does the Yegen or the Alpujarra that Brenan knew still exist? Visiting the writer's former stomping ground after reading South From Granada, it seemed to me that, in many respects, this remote pocket of Andalucía hasn't

What to do

Film and music with Brenan

Tony Bryant

The Gerald Brenan Cultural Association in Churriana (ACGB) has organised a special dual-language seminar on one of Gerald Brenan's most celebrated works today, Friday 22 December. The event will begin with the screening of the film, South from ... Granada, based on Brenan's book of the same name. The film, by award-winning Spanish film director, Fernando Colomo, is an autobiographical account of Brenan's life in Yegen, the small village nestled in the Alpujarras in Granada where he settled in 1920. ... Brenan had just been demobbed when he went in search of a cheap place to live where he could study and become a writer. The young Englishman spent his time reading, writing and catching up on an education which he felt he had missed by not attending

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Gamel Woolsey, the burning poet

Alberto gómez

...or ‘Malaga burning’ in English. As in so many other cases, none of this was enough to offset the macho coup of history, the balance of patriarchal accounts which she ended up witnessing as the wife of Gerald Brenan. From their house in ... Churriana, Woolsey and Brenan witnessed the start of the war. It had appeared to be the loveliest morning of that summer (“in all the rummage box of time there could hardly have been found a more beautiful day”) but it turned out to be the prelude to terror. ... referred to her marriage with Brenan as a way of attracting commercial interest: “The emotional testimony of the Civil War by the woman who shared her life with Gerald Brenan.” Paradoxically, Woolsey had always tried to transcend beyond her colleagues,

Local

Cemetery visit kicks off Gerald Brenan commemorations

On 19 January, thirty years ago, British Hispanist Gerald Brenan died in Alhaurín el Grande. To mark the occasion, the cultural centre opened in his name in the writer's former house in Churriana launched the commemorations with a visit to his grave ... in the English Cemetery in Malaga. Carlos Pranger read a text written for the occasion by Brenan's biographer, Gathorne Hardy. Also present at the event were filmmaker Fernando Colomo, writer Harry Eyres, Culture councillor Gemma del Corral, former ... SUR in English editor Liz Parry and Silvia Grijalba, director of the Casa Gerald Brenan.

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When Brenan foresaw the end of Franco

FRANCISCO GRIÑÁN MALAGA

Professors at Cambridge University offered him the Modern History Chair, but with the same courtesy with which the proposal was made, Gerald Brenan told them that he had never been to the university and that his only wish was to return to Malaga, to ... the place which he had portrayed and revealed as if it were a map in The Spanish Labyrinth, which he wrote in 1943. Three years after that book was published, Brenan wrote what Carlos Pranger, his executor, calls a 'pamphlet', a spin-off of that ... that in 1946, nearly 30 years before it actually happened," he explains. Although Gerald Brenan used to describe his everyday life in letters to friends, these have not yet been published This 'pamphlet', which was commissioned by a foundation and

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A return to find poverty... and vitality

Mark Nayler reading into spain

One couldn’t wish for a better travel companion than Gerald Brenan. His honesty, curiosity, humour and deep knowledge of Spanish history are all on display in The Face of Spain, written after he and his wife, the American poet Gamel Woolsey, ... revisited the country in 1949. It was their first visit since they’d fled their home in Malaga at the outbreak of civil war in 1936. Brenan is at once tour guide, sociologist, historian and journalist, giving his reader a rich variety of perspectives on the ... Franco-ruled Spain he and Woolsey saw ten years after its civil war ended. In 1949, after ten years under an oppressive dictatorship, many Spaniards were suffering greatly. It was in beautiful Cordoba, the second stop on his itinerary, where Brenan received

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A luxury seafood diet in Paleolithic Malaga

FERNANDO TORRES

English. As in so many other cases, none of this was enough to offset the macho coup of history, the balance of patriarchal accounts which she ended up witnessing as the wife of Gerald Brenan. From their house in Churriana, Woolsey and Brenan ... Brenan as a way of attracting commercial interest: "The emotional testimony of the Civil War by the woman who shared her life with Gerald Brenan." Paradoxically, Woolsey had always tried to transcend beyond her colleagues, although the masculine ... who invited her to London. There, she began a passionate relationship with John's brother Llewelyn, a married man, with whom she had an overwhelming adventure full of frustrations which would pursue her even after she was involved with Brenan. When

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Sharing a passion for Andalucía

sur

Writer, journalist and SUR in English reporter Tony Bryant was in Malaga on Wednesday to give a talk on his books on flamenco and Andalusian legends at the Official Language School (EOI). Organised by the Gerald Brenan Cultural Association, the talk

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Clubs make the most of the season

SUR IN ENGLISH

Los Boliches. Gerald Brenan Cultural Association Language exchange The Official Language School of Málaga and the Cultural Association Gerald Brenan organise English-Spanish exchange language sessions every Wednesday from 11am to 1pm and Friday from 4.30

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Catering for language learning

Mindy Burrows

...hospitality college in Malaga. This is why he got together with the Gerald Brenan Cultural Association (ACGB) to organise the 'Brunch with Brenan and Hemingway' event last Friday. The morning combined a Spanish and English language exchange with Spanish and ... hospitality students had prepared presentations in English for the event with the ACGB last week. They told the stories of English-language writers Ernest Hemingway and Gerald Brenan, and spoke of their enthusiasm for speaking Spanish and English. This ... presentation was accompanied by another from the members of the ACGB language exchange about Brenan's diet; the members of the ACGB are mostly Spanish and British and gave their talk in a bilingual format. Lola Ortega Muñoz, president of the Gerald Brenan