Talking Location with David Cairns of Finavon – Victorian EDINBURGH to WASHINGTON
Talking Location With … Graham Hurley: SPAIN
3rd July 2024
#TalkingLocationWith ... Graham Hurley, author of Dead Ground set in Civil War SPAIN
Spain in September
Turning a gleam in the eye into a novel is no accident, and Lin (Graham’s wife) and I have been at this game long enough to recognise the twin benefits of paying personal visits to all the key locations in the first draft of a book, wherever they might be. Number one, nothing survives a hands-on visit intact. And number two, it’s fun to set out on a mission with an overarching purpose.
The book in question is Dead Ground, the latest title in my The Spoils of War collection. It deals with British attempts to foil Operation Felix, Hitler’s attempt to kick the Brits off the rock of Gibraltar in 1940/1941. This, like many of the key characters in the book, is far from fictional.
We travel everywhere by coach, cheap and comfortable. Our first stop is Guernika, in the Basque mountains, world famous as the birthplace of blitzkrieg. An open air display describes what happened here in the middle of the town, an account underscored with a sequence of graphic black and white photographs: of buildings on fire, of people fleeing en masse, of piles of rubble afterwards.
In the town’s deserted museum, after a stunning light and sound show, we find ourselves treading uncertainly on a glass floor that floats us over the grief and debris of sudden civilian deaths on a hitherto unimaginable scale. Through the glass at our feet lies a little girl’s dolly, the head severed, the dress blackened by fire. Lin winces at the image but this, I guess, is why we’ve come, why I started writing the book in the first place. Dead Ground, indeed.
Teruel. Photo credit Tripfiction
From the Basque country, we go by coach to Teruel. There are fine views of the approach routes used by Franco’s rebel army as they closed on the defenders of the Republic but the best we can do by way of evidence is a line of old bullet scars in the thick walls of a local monastery. Apart from that, any passing questions about the siege of Teruel elicits nothing but a blank look and a polite shrug. For once, we seem to have stopped the torrent of conversation that is Spain. La Guerra Civile, here and in countless cities to come, has simply vanished.
From Teruel, we go to Murcia. In Dead Ground, Annie Wrenne, the female lead, spends a great deal of time in this city, recovering from a wild affair. She makes a friend of another character, Carlos Ortega, who has been badly injured when a church fell on his head during an air raid in Madrid.
One of the key research targets is the Cathedral de Santa Maria. In a way Annie hates the place, with its faux reassurance and anxious pieties, but the second time she pays a visit, early in the evening this time, she spies a painting by Murillo. The painting, dating from the sixteenth century, is Santa Thomas de Villanueva Gives Alms, and the mother with the child in the bottom left hand corner has to be her. Annie Wrenne knows a great deal about fine art. But she’s never seen this canvas before. Will the book include this? Now, thanks to our visit, it will.
From Murcia, again by coach, we head south. Gibraltar, to our acute disappointment, is Portsmouth with palm trees, an outpost of the British empire dangling from the belly of Spain, much-eyed by the Germans, and the geographical centrepiece of Dead Ground.
But no problema. Our tour leads us to a collection of photos in a museum. The photos date from way back, and give me exactly the reference I need. Rephotographing photos is strictly forbidden but Lin acts as look-out and decoy-person while I hurry from print to print with my trusty smart phone, and cop the lot.
The next day, in Algeciras, we spend the morning prowling the Hotel de Reina Christina. The hotel has fine gardens and the main bar was the place where rival spies intermingled after a heavy day’s espionage. This would undoubtedly have included important characters in Dead Ground – especially Annie Wrenne, MI5 agent Tam Moncrieff, and the real-life head of the Abwehr, Admiral Canaris – and I find myself trying to explain this in poor Spanish to the woman behind reception.
She’s very helpful, offers us a variety of rooms, but never quite gets to grips with Admiral Canaris.
‘You want this room?’
‘I want the number.’
‘The number? How do you sleep in a number?’
Room fifteen, by the way. Yet another research question answered. Was our trip worth it? Unquestionably. Will we do something similar next time round? Por supuesto.
Graham Hurley
Dead Ground by Graham Hurley is published by Head of Zeus in hardback on 4th July at £20
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