This book is the only detailed description of the famous Siege of Alcázar that exists today in global literature. This particular siege took place in the very first months of the Spanish Civil War and essentially set the tone for the tragic events that were to follow. The British author, who himself had professional military training, wrote this work just a few months after the end of the siege, having had the opportunity to personally visit the site where it took place and speak with many survivors. His work, which unfolds in a diary format and records everything that happened during those 69 tragic yet glorious days of 1936 at the Military Academy of Toledo, bears the indelible personal impression he gained from these recent events.

His narrative is enriched with a multitude of unknown details and impressive incidents, which reveal the grandeur of the Spanish people, the reasons that led them to the tragedy of civil strife, and the feelings that pervaded those involved on both sides. Although the main emphasis is placed on the heroic garrison of Alcázar, which stoically endured an incredible moral and material ordeal, giving the first major psychological victory to General Franco's Nationalists, the book does not neglect to present the besiegers, their motives, their expectations, the composition of their personnel, and how they organized and conducted the struggle for the medieval fortress-symbol of Castile.