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An Anarchist's Story

by Chris Dolan

ISBN: 9781841586854
Imprint: Birlinn
Publication Date: Mar 2009
Format: Paperback
Price: £9.99
Stock Status: in stock

’A riveting, heart-breaking read,’ - The Scotsman

'An illuminating, sparkling crash course in events and ideas that shaped Glasgow and Europe for decades. A wonderful author, Dolan achieves the vim and colour one might expect of a scriptwriter, yet without colouring in too many blanks with hypotheses. An Anarchist’s Story is a long-overdue, highly worthy account of a life more of us need to know about. When stories as astonishing as this are so well told, fiction looks dull by comparison.' - History Scotland Review

In 1936, with civil war sweeping through Spain, Ethel Macdonald – a working-class girl from Motherwell – was to become, for a year, one of the world’s most famous voices. She was perhaps the first example of an ‘embedded reporter’, sending dispatches and broadcasts back from the Spanish Anarchist camp in Barcelona to the UK. But she made no pretence of ‘impartiality’ or balance of opinion; she was a lifelong anarchist, utterly committed to her cause.

Mystery surrounds Ethel Macdonald, from her birth certificate to the last days of her life. When Ethel suddenly fell silent in Barcelona she became the focus of an international search and intergovernmental negotiations. In 1937 the optimism of the previous year had gone. Ethel had been imprisoned, escaped, and was in hiding in a foreign country in the grip of war. Dubbed on newspaper headlines ‘The Scots Scarlet Pimpernel’, she was imprisoned by her erstwhile comrades, the very people she had been fighting alongside; and now that she was silenced and in danger, she became even more of an enigma.

This book, exactly a century after her birth, uses contemporary accounts, her own words and those of her close associates to unravel the extraordinary mystery of Ethel Macdonald and examines the unique impact that she had during this fascinating period of European history.

Award-winning poet, author and playwright Chris Dolan was born in Glasgow. He writes regularly for radio and screen, and his screenplay for An Anarchist’s Story was broadcast by the BBC in 2006. He has written features, reviews and travel pieces for various newspapers and magazines, including The Independent and Scotland on Sunday, and he has been Literary Reviewer and Features Writer for The Herald since 2002.

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