This new book,subtitled 'Four Women in Spain' and written by Paul Preston,is published by Harper/Collins at £16.99 (ISBN 000255-6332).l confess that I didn't buy the copy I read through, simply because it covers an area beyond my interests; yet the social and political role of women in the Spanish conflict and beyond is one of fascinating contrast to the intensity of the man's war. Preston reminds us that although there are 20,000 books published on the Spanish Civil War, less than 1 % of these deal with the role of women.

The book considers in a semi-biographical way, the contribution of two Republican and two Nationalist women who served in the conflict. Fortunately, the obvious choice of "La Pasionara" is avoided, and Preston instead considers Nan Green, a British Communist who worked as a hospital administrator and fell foul of the Party in 1938 after her husband's death in battle. He also introduces Margarita Nelken who was a journalist for the Republican cause,and was sentenced to life imprisonment in her absence at the war's end.She it seems made an enemy of Dolores Ibarruri, rightly termed 'formidable' and as a feminist perhaps her literary work in Spain was an impossible task for the time.Nelken died totally forgotten in Mexico in 1974. On Franco's side we are given Priscilla Scott-Ell is, aged only 20 in 1936 and one of only two or three British women to work in the Nationalist medical units, and who suffered a disastrous marriage in 1939, having followed her lover around the fronts for three years.

The most interesting of all four case studies however is Mercedes Sanz-Bachiller,widow of a Falangist leader who set up a relief organisation, "Auxilio Social" to feed and shelter orphaned children,but who lost control of her destiny to Pilar Primo de Rivera, head of the Franco Party's women's organisation; this is a rare and valuable insight into Nationalist political struggle from within. Women adopted the key roles in economic and social welfare during the years of war,but both Republicans and Nationalists wanted women to return to 'traditional' roles post-war.

Indeed,all of the rather brave women examined in Preston's book suffered from the 'traditional' values of the Spanish male, and lived out despite their generous gifts to Spain, lives of disappointment and largely of misery.