"In 1937, while working for the London News Chronicle as a correspondent with the loyalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, I was captured by General Franco's troops and held for several months in solitary confinement, witnessing the executions of my fellow-prisoners and awaiting my own. [This book] is an account of that experience written immediately after my release, in July-August, 1937 ... My principal interest in writing [this book] was an introspective one : the psychological impact of the condemned cell. From this view point, the political background was irrelevant, and the narrative, as far as it went, was the truthful account of an intimate experience"--Pref. to the Danube ed.