The poet Federico Garcia Lorca, born in 1898 in a village in the province of Granada, finished writing his last play The House of Bernarda Alba on 19th June 1936. By the 18th August he was dead, murdered by the supporters of Franco, shot in olive groves near the village of Alfacar. One of his killers, Juan Luis Trecastro, boasted subsequently that he had put "two bullets into his a*** for being a queer." His writings were subsequently outlawed and burnt in Granada's Plaza del Carmen. Just before his death he revealed to a Spanish journalist "I still consider myself a true novice, and I'm still learning my profession... My work has just begun."

Lorca had read the play to a group of friends in the week after it was written, and was particularly pleased with the evolution of style from his earlier work - at...