27 APRIL 1962, Page 8

Who . Parodies Whom?

The cheeks .of but cousin of Great Turnstile 'Must haVe deepened from their usual pink into the plain red of embarrassment over the weekend. !'Hemingway, Ilya Ehrenburg, Claud Cockburn and I drove up to the front in a taxi painted in anarchist colours. . . .' Thus on page 568 Hugh Thomas begins a parody of the kind of paragraph which fills out the innumerable books, pamphlets, and newspaper articles about the Spanish Civil War. On page 555 of the same issue Kingsley Martin begins an article entitled The Spanish Civil War' with these well-chosen. words: 'On Christmas Day 1938 George and Pat Strauss, Ted Willis, Dorothy Woodman and I crossed the snow-covered road from Perpignan into Catalonia. . . .' Where the devil had Claud Cockburn got to?