Interview with Professor Paul Preston

Abstract

Paul Preston (Liverpool, 1946) has been professor in international history at the London School of Economics since 1991 and is the honorary president of the Association for Contemporary Iberian Studies. Renowned for his work on the Spanish Civil War and Francoist dictatorship, Preston’s internationally acclaimed books include A People Betrayed (2020), The Last Days of the Spanish Republic (2016), The Spanish Holocaust (2012), The Spanish Civil War (2006), Doves of War: Four Women of Spain (2002), Comrades! Portraits from the Spanish Civil War (1999) and Franco: A Biography (1993). An English-language edition of his latest work Arquitectos del terror: Franco y los artífices del odio, published in Spanish in 2021, is due for publication in Autumn 2022. Preston was interviewed in January 2021 by Deborah Madden, a Leverhulme Trust research fellow at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Preston offers intriguing insight into his research, discussing the politics of sexual violence, memory politics, research as a form of activism and his main regret as a historian. The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.