Women on the left as well as right faced specific prejudice

Women on the left, as well as right, faced specific prejudice. Nelken was derided as the “copyroom mattress”; the beautiful Sanz-Bachiller was demoted as a Falange heroine when she remarried. Franco preferred women to play no public role.With hindsight, the idealism of those who went to Spain to oppose Franco is saddening. Defeat awaited them, and the dissension between socialists, communists and anarchists left permanent scars. Preston quotes Nan Green’s husband, George, writing to her: “We shall build a new world.” But in Jackson’s poignant section on the aftermath, she describes how those who survived – like Nelken – glimpsed a darker possibility. In 1948 she wrote: “How awful to think that those who fell, those who gave everything, have made their sacrifice in vain, for the world is even more selfish and mean than the one they believed they were going to change.”Paul Preston appears at the Cheltenham Festival on Saturday 19 October.

As thousands of students receive their A-level regradings this week, many could find themselves facing an unanticipated gap year, if they decide to wait to get in to their first-choice university next autumn. Gap-year organisations are already reporting higher levels of interest than usual for the time of year. But from the point of view of the students and their families, there are some important questions to be asked before diving into the first glamorous-sounding gap-year opportunity. It is likely to require money (£3,000 is the average), so this may mean a job for at least part of the year. Then there is the issue of what the student will get out of it. Should 18-year-olds simply be having fun during their year off, or should they, in some way, be improving themselves, learning something, and adding to their skills and qualifications? This last may matter more to parents than to their demob-happy offspring: “Parents tend to worry that their children will just go off travelling and not really achieve anything,” says Lisa Barnes, operations director at Nonstopski, a newly formed company that offers an 11-week skiing-instructor training course in Fernie, British Columbia (£5,200, including flights). “They worry that if they don’t have anything structured, they’ll waste the year.”Lisa Barnes herself did a similar skiing-instructor course at 18, and has never looked back: “It gave me more confidence than anything I’d ever done.

I’d been a mediocre student at school, never in the first teams for sport – and all of a sudden I had a qualification that made me stand out from other people.”Interesting or challenging gap-year experiences increasingly find favour with universities and with employers, particularly if a student is articulate about the way that they have benefited. With an estimated 40,000 students now taking a gap year (set to rise to 90,000 by 2005, according to predictions from the gap-year industry), and 60 per cent of these from state schools, gone are the days when the gap year was the preserve of rich public-school kids.Australia, South America and North America are top gap-year destinations (with a 12-month round-the-world ticket costing around £850). But for many more students, the year may be spent getting valuable work experience closer to home.If you haven’t got much spare cash, Community Service Volunteers (a sister organisation to VSO – Voluntary Service Overseas) has a range of projects around the country and provides accommodation for volunteers as well as paying them a small weekly allowance. For between four and 12 months, you could, for instance, be caring for young children in Edinburgh, helping the homeless in Swansea or Bradford, or mentoring young offenders in Hackney. “Part of the experience is total immersion in other people’s lives,” says Barbara Williams, UK director of volunteering partners. “We give volunteers quite a lot of responsibility, but they also get a lot of support from project supervisors.”Fiona Smith, 20, left college last year and hopes to go on to university, but this year she is spending six months as a CSV volunteer, working with physically disabled adults in a residential centre in Islington.”I was petrified when I began, because I had hoped to work with children and I didn’t know much about disabilities,” she says. “But now it’s really good: I take them shopping, to caf?and to the cinema, and I build good relationships with them.

I look forward to going into work every day: I get there a little early, and leave a little late.”Sarah Phipps, 20, now reading biology at Bristol University, spent a month working with 5- to 12-year-olds in an orphanage in Nepal, an assignment managed by the Hertfordshire-based company, Global Vision International. “It was a shock when I arrived, as I had never been in the developing world on my own before But I ended up fitting in, and didn’t want to leave. It was one of the best times I’ve had – you get such a buzz of fulfilment.”Other Global Vision projects include helping to conserve leather-backed turtles in Panama (10 weeks for £1,950, not including flights), or monitoring big cats and wild dogs in South Africa. Students work alongside world-class teams of specialists, and return home, the company director Richard Walton hopes, as “mini-ambassadors for the environment”.Some companies offer a mix of work and play. With Blue Dog Adventures, for £370 a month you could be a cowboy in the American West, helping out on a cattle ranch. Or with Madventurer, you do the work first – eg five weeks using your skills (teaching? sports coaching? building?) to help a community in Kenya or Tanzania – and then play afterwards, white-water rafting at Victoria Falls, if the mood takes you.CSV hotline: 0800 374991gap year advice: Global Vision International: 01582-831300 Madventurer: 0191-261 1996 Blue Dog Adventures: 01582-831302 Nonstopski: 020-8772 7852 Also useful: .