Franco S Friends

Published to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the Falangist uprising in July 2011, Franco's Friends tells the little-known true story of how MI6 orchestrated the coup that brought General Franco to power in Spain in 1936, leading to the Spanish civil war and 40 years of right-wing dictatorship. It has long been known that a British plane took Franco from the Canaries to Morocco at the start of the coup and that Major Hugh Pollard travelled on the plane from London, masquerading as a tourist and accompanied by two attractive blondes to add to the deception that this was just a pleasure trip. What is not known is the importance of his role and the extent of the involvement of the British intelligence services. Franco's Friends shows that Pollard was a lifelong member of MI6 and discloses a list of Britons who helped engineer Franco's coup that reads like a who's who of British intelligence (including james Bond creator, Ian Fleming). The book shows that MI6 continued working in Spain through to the Second World War, putting together behind-the-scenes deals and ensuring that the UK's interests were maintained. Crucially, MI6 even financed bribes paid to the Spanish generals by the British naval attache in Madrid to keep Spain neutral, thus reaping the benefits for Britain in 1939-45. Franco's Friends , based on previously unknown material from the National Archives, Imperial War Museum, the British Library and private archives, is one of the great previously untold stories of the Second World War, revealing how Britain made a dubious but difficult moral choice that would have repercussions on the outcome of the Second World War.

Inspired by Alcoholics Anonymous's 12 Steps and 12 Traditions, Actors Anonymous is a dark, genre-bending work that mixes memoir and pure invention in an audacious examination of celebrity, acting and the making of fiction. Actors Anonymous is unsettling, funny and personal - a series of stories told in many forms: a McDonald's drive-thru operator who spends his shift trying on accents; an ex-child star recalling a massive beachside bacchanal; hospital volunteers putting a camera in the hands of a patient obsessed with horror films; a vampire-flick starlet who discovers a cryptic book written by a famous actor, who may have killed his father and gone on the run. The book contains profound insights into the nature and purpose of acting. Franco mercilessly turns his 'James Franco' persona inside out while, at the same time, providing a fascinating meditation on his art, along with nightmarish tales of excess. 'Hollywood has always been a private club,' he writes. 'I open the gates. I say welcome. I say, Look inside.' Franco's writing is vivid and disturbing, but what distinguishes his work is the great compassion he extends towards his characters, who he presents in all their raw humanity, while at the same time providing insight into their deeper selves.

The first comprehensive scholarly biography of Franco in English, presenting an objective and deeply researched account of the Spanish dictator's personal, professional, and political life.

Best-selling author David Shields, and multi-talented writer, actor and director James Franco team up to transform a conversation into a highly original study of celebrity. Flip-Side is a work of dialogue that explores the relationship between performance and persona, on the one hand, and underlying pain and trauma, on the other. The text is complimented by dozens of selfies of James and Lana.

Straight James / Gay James, actor James Franco’s new chapbook of poems, explores the facets of his public and private personas. Straight James / Gay James is a poetic bildungsroman—raw, candid, and uninhibited. James Franco writes about life as an actor, sexuality, questions of identity, gender, family, Gucci, Lana Del Rey, James Dean, Hollywood, and more. His poetic style varies from the imagistic to the prosaic. The chapbook also contains an interview of “Gay James” conducted by “Straight James.” Yes, Straight James asks the question: “Let’s get substantial: are you f*****g gay or what?”

International friendship is a distinct type of interstate relationship, and that as such, it can contribute to capture aspects of international politics that have long remained unattended. This book offers a framework for analyzing friendship in international politics by presenting a variety of conceptual approaches and empirical cases.

A fiercely vivid collection of stories about troubled California adolescents and misfits.

This book surveys Franco-German relations from the French Revolution to the 1990s, collecting the most current research from area specialists.