Set principally in San Sebasti n and Madrid between 1934 and 1936, this brutally honest, semi-autobiographical novel portrays a frantic love affair against the backdrop of confusion and apprehension that characterized the "bienio negro", as Spain drifted inexorably towards civil war. It was described by Elizabeth Bowen as, "A remarkable first novel revealing] a remorseless interest in emotional truth." Elizabeth Lake was the pen-name adopted by Inez Pearn, a girl from a working-class background who won a scholarship to Oxford in the early 1930s and later joined the campaign for Britain to provide support for the Spanish Republic. She went on to produce five novels. This edition of Spanish Portrait includes an afterword by her daughter, Vicky Randall.