Giles E.H. Tremlett (born

Plymouth Plymouth () is a port city status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority in South West England. It is located on the south coast of Devon, approximately south-west of Exeter and south-west of London. It is bordered by Cornwall to ...

, 1962) is a historian, author and journalist based in

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

, Spain. Tremlett is author of five works of history and non-fiction that have been translated into half a dozen languages. He won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography in 2018. He has held various roles for ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

'', including as chief correspondent in Iberia and as a Long Reads writer. He previously wrote for ''

The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Eco ...

''. He was a Visiting Fellow at the

London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 milli ...

for five years from 2016.

Biography

He graduated in Human Sciences at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

in 1984 and has also studied at the Universities of

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

and

Lisbon Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administrative limits w ...

. He had his first taste of Spanish life when he lived in

for two years in the mid-1980s. After a period in

and then in London he returned to Spain in the mid-1990s. He was ''The Guardians correspondent for Spain, Portugal and the Maghreb for a dozen years. He was also

correspondent for ''The Economist'' for a decade until 2016. In 2012 he was voted Correspondent of the Year by the Madrid International Press Club. He has been a regular current affairs commentator for Spanish broadcasters, including state-owned TVE television, La Sexta and the country's biggest radio station,

Cadena SER La Cadena SER (the SER Network) is Spain's premier radio network in terms of both seniority (it was created in 1924) and audience share (it had a regular listenership in 2018 of 4,139,000). The acronym SER stands for ''Sociedad Española de Radi ...

, as well as contributing to newspapers like ''

El País ''El País'' (; ) is a Spanish-language daily newspaper in Spain. ''El País'' is based in the capital city of Madrid and it is owned by the Spanish media conglomerate PRISA. It is the second most circulated daily newspaper in Spain . ''El Pa ...

'' or '' El Mundo''. He was co-founder and curator of the ''Docubeats'' documentary project at ''The Guardian'' and ''El País''. He has been a guest lecturer on journalism or contemporary Spanish history and participant in seminars at numerous universities, including Oxford, MIT and Stanford.

Personal

Tremlett is a twin. He moved around the world from an early age, following his father Colonel Edward Tremlett to postings in South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Turkey and Germany.

Major works

His book ''Ghosts of Spain: Travels through a country's hidden past'' (2007) was translated into five languages. In 2010 he published a biography of

Catherine of Aragon Catherine of Aragon (also spelt as Katherine, ; 16 December 1485 – 7 January 1536) was Queen of England as the first wife of King Henry VIII from their marriage on 11 June 1509 until their annulment on 23 May 1533. She was previously ...

, the Spanish ''infanta'' who became Henry VIII's first wife, with

Faber and Faber Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel ...

in London and Walker in New York. ''Catherine of Aragon'' was

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC's ...

's "

Book of the Week ''Book of the Week'' is a BBC Radio 4 series that is broadcast daily on week days. Each week, extracts from the selected book, usually a non-fiction work, are read over five episodes; each fifteen-minute episode is broadcast in the morning (9:45a ...

" and was short-listed for the HW Fisher Best First Biography Prize. It has been translated into Spanish, Russian and Polish. His biography of ''Isabella of Castile'' – the Spanish queen who sent Columbus to the Americas – was published in 2017. It won the

Elizabeth Longford Prize The Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography was established in 2003 in memory of Elizabeth Longford (1906-2002), the British author, biographer and historian. The £5,000 prize is awarded annually for a historical biography published in t ...

in 2018. It was a top-selling history book in Spain in 2018 and has also been translated into Portuguese and Chinese. In October 2020 he published ''The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War'', which was a Guardian newspaper "book of the Day". It draws on archive material held in Moscow and recently made available to historians. According to the historian Sir Paul Preston, it provides "in lucid and compelling prose, the overall history of the Brigades that has been lacking". In popular media opinions differ from generally favourable though warning that the volume might seem "overly sympathetic to the Brigades", to the statement that "this book is as close to a definitive history as we are likely to get".

Bibliography

*''Ghosts of Spain''

. *''Catherine of Aragon'' Walker & Company. *''Isabella of Castile'' Bloomsbury *''The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War'' Bloomsbury *''España: A Brief History'' Head of Zeus ISBN 978-1789544381

References

External links