tomorrow perhaps the future
A New Yorker Book of the Year
'Now, as certainly never before, we are determined or compelled to take sides.' Nancy Cunard
In the 1930s, women and men from across Britain, Europe and America made their way to Spain to be part of what they identified as a historic fight for freedom from fascism. Tomorrow Perhaps the Future follows a handful of extraordinary outsiders who were determined to live out their lives with courage and conviction.
Sarah Watling weaves together the journeys of the young American journalist Martha Gellhorn and the seasoned radical Josephine Herbst; the British writers and partners Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland; the aristocratic rebel Jessica Mitford and the maverick poet Nancy Cunard, drawing in their responses to the Spanish Civil War in both literature and life. She considers the wary position of Virginia Woolf, trying and failing to keep the conflict out of her family, and searches out the stories of African-American nurse Salaria Kea, Jewish photographer Gerda Taro and others, tracing their decisions to face up to history.
A year into the struggle, Nancy Cunard took an urgent poll of contemporary writers asking the question straight: which side are you on? In our age of political divisions and war, Tomorrow Perhaps the Future is a book that asks questions of solidarity, resistance and the arts, which explores how we respond to the need to declare a side, and how we know when that moment - the moment to step forward - has arrived.
Read an extract here.
Fascinating and compellingly readable. – Paul Preston, author of The Spanish Civil War
A brilliant, impassioned, and much-needed tribute to the women who used their art to fight fascism during the Spanish Civil War. Watling's research is meticulous, and her prose sings on every page. Tomorrow Perhaps the Future is extraordinary and captivating. – Heather Clark, author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
In this vital new feminist history of the Spanish Civil War, Sarah Watling assembles an unforgettable cast of intellectuals and activists, all of them outsiders, for whom Spain represented a fight for democracy itself, one in which no neutral ground could remain. Her nuanced account celebrates the conviction and commitment of remarkable women like Martha Gellhorn, Nancy Cunard, and Virginia Woolf, while remaining attuned to the danger and anguish of taking a side and taking a stand. Shadowed by the resurgence of fascism in our own time, Tomorrow Perhaps the Future is history that hums with the urgency of now. – Joanna Scutts, author of Hotbed: Bohemian Greenwich Village and the Secret Club that Sparked Modern Feminism
Provocative, compelling narratives of women on the front lines of fighting fascism, making history nearly a century ago—yet relegated to its dustbin until now. Tomorrow Perhaps the Future is a powerful, moving cautionary tale for today, how individual acts of bravery may yield more bitter than sweet unless sustained by broad movements for democracy and systemic change. – Helen Zia, author of The Last Boat Out of Shanghai
Sarah Watling has brought together a remarkable group of personalities and her writing brings the Spanish Civil War to freshly vivid life. Best of all, she allows us to understand the urgency and confusion of these women, who saw the war as the turning point of their age and tried to respond to it in ways that were useful, possible, and necessary to them. By pointing out the correspondence between their turbulent times and our current world crises, she makes us feel their urgency as our own. – Judith Mackrell, author of Flappers; Women of a Dangerous Generation
Tomorrow Perhaps the Future offers an intimate and nuanced exploration of what animated and sustained a group of prominent foreigners who took sides in the mortal ideological struggle against fascism that was the Spanish Civil War. Sarah Watling tells of the harrowing battles, the destruction, and the death, but also of the thinking of her subjects, their passions and convictions, their bravery and ambivalence. – Brooke Kroeger, author of Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism
In her fascinating book, Sarah Watling brings alive with great vividness a small cast of disparate characters who travelled to Spain during the Civil War, risking great danger. … It’s the slow crushing of that idealism that makes this book such an affecting and sometimes tough read. … My picture of Nancy as a heavy- drinking, boyfriend-slapping socialite was radically altered by reading this account of her unflagging wartime exploits. … Sarah Watling brings all these passionate characters together with great aplomb. — Daily Mail, Book of the Week
‘Watling’s narrative, inserting vivid glimpses of the conflict to situate her shuffling of a deck of characters who themselves embodied complex and evolving ideas, is expertly balanced. In Virginia Woolf she presents a lone but mighty foil to the often bullying imperative of action. … Rather than arbitrate such intractable questions, Watling lays them out, reflectively and empathetically, via her characters. Exceptional people all, fascinating company in their different paths towards Spain and, later, as those paths crossed, whether at decadent parties in besieged Madrid or in caves and trenches. … Cunard is the great dazzler of this compendium of conscience. … Arguably, Cunard was another victim of non-intervention, and of the social encouragement of apathy that is just beginning to be challenged again. As we ponder our choices and risks in the crises of today, we may see no cause – not even that of Ukraine – as synthesized and as romantic as Spain. We may fear that “tomorrow, perhaps no future”. This book is useful for thinking about it all.’ Times Literary Supplement
In her engrossing and impressive book, Sarah Watling looks at some of those women who went to war, not just to fight fascism or scratch the itch of adventure but also to show what women could do.
—The New Statesmen
It is the women, not the boys, about whom Sarah Watling writes here: the reporters, photographers and authors for whom the Spanish conflict became... the most important event ‘in the life of the world’, a ghastly, menacing foreshadowing of the war to come... What drew Watling to these women was that they chose not to be dispassionate but to take sides, rejecting what Gellhorn dismissed as ‘all this objectivity shit’ in their support for the Republicans... Group biographies are notoriously hard to write. But Watling knits together with considerable skill the details of her characters’ lives and adventures in Spain .... She also intersperses her narrative with perceptive commentary. Each of these women, as she shows, battled with her own demons.
—Caroline Moorehead, Literary Review
Exhilarating... Sarah Watling follows a handful of brilliant intellectuals as they wrestle with the nature of duty in a morally complicated world.
—Kathryn Hughes, Mail on Sunday
The most famous literary chroniclers of the Spanish civil war may have been Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell, but, as Sarah Watling demonstrates in her fascinating and comprehensive study, that ignores the far less self-aggrandising contributions of a group of brilliant women who included everyone from the poet and activist Nancy Cunard to the journalist (and wife of Hemingway) Martha Gellhorn. Watling’s protagonists are flawed but brave, battling fascism with guts and determination – even if, inevitably, they kept an eye on which of their gruelling experiences would make the best copy. — The Observer
‘These are interesting and colourful characters, and Watling seems to have chosen them because they were all outsiders – individuals who ‘resisted in some way the lives they had been offered’ … She readily admits to ‘a weakness for people with an instinct for rebellion’; but while her portrayals are sympathetic, they are not uncritical. She has researched her subjects carefully, and this is a serious, scholarly work, which also brings her group of writers, poets and activists vividly to life. As she explains: ‘I wanted to know what it had meant to take a side, and how it had been done, and I wanted to know what writing had to do with it.’ Many – and not just writers – will feel that these are questions well worth asking.’ — Richard Baxell, The Spectator
‘Watling delves into the motivations that drew these women to Spain and how their experiences there were transformative. This focus, especially on [Gerda] Taro, [Salaria] Kea, and [Nan] Green, whose contributions have been underreported or misappropriated, adds greatly not only to our understanding of women in the Spanish Civil War but also to our sense of women as full participants in history. This book belongs in all library collections next to Adam Hochschild’s Spain in Our Hearts.’ — Booklist, starred review
‘In this brilliantly conceived study, historian Watling spotlights international writers, artists, and activists who opposed the fascist takeover of Spain in the 1930s, arguing that the conflict drew in individuals who conceived of themselves as outside the mainstream… Digging deep into the archives to resurface overlooked stories, Watling skillfully traces the motivations that led so many different people to make the extraordinary decision to fight fascism. The result is both an essential take on the Spanish Civil War and a stirring reflection on personal responsibilities in times of crisis.' — Publishers Weekly, starred review
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