This book was a bit of an enigma. One of those that when I was actually reading it, I enjoyed for the most part, but once I had put it down, found hard to pick up again. Sansom, judging from his appendix and bibliography, did a lot of work researching the historical veracity of the time about which he writes, and this attention to detail really pays off. The descriptions of the political situation and the pictures he draws of the people and the way they were torn apart is both detailed and compelling. The problem I found was with the main characters, which I found quite unlikeable, and at times sketchily drawn. The action unfolds just after the retreat of the allies from Dunkirk and centres on the action unfolding in Madrid, where Franco has taken over the country, the people are starving and frightened and Franco is attempting to throw his lot in with Hitler. The story is one of espionage, with the British jostling to protect British interests in the chaos and factionalisation of Spanish politics and atrocities. The human interest side of the story comes from the inclusion of a trinity of ex-British schoolboys who are all inexorably drawn into the Spanish troubles and forced to play out their own complicated relationships alongside it. In the meantime there is a complex love relationship involving two women who become involved with the men. The labyrinthine turns and twists of the plot echo the confusion of a world of espionage and betrayal perfectly, but sometimes make for heavy weather and the real problem I had was that the love stories are not really very convincing, nor compelling enough to have you turning the pages. A real mixed bag.