A cultural taste of Málaga

Edward Fitzgerald Brenan was born in Malta, the son of an English army officer. His early childhood was spent in India and South Africa before he continued his formal education in England. Brenan initially studied at Radley College and then at the Military Academy at Sandhurst. Independently, he studied art, poetry, and philosophy on his own with the help of John Hope-Johnstone. Brenan travelled with Hope-Johnstone through France, Italy, and Dalmatia when he was eighteen, before joining the 5th Gloucesters in 1914. With his regiment he saw action in the Ypres Salient, on the Somme, and in the second battle of the Marne.

Brenan was awarded the Military Cross and the Croix de Guerre in 1918. The following year Hope-Johnstone and his fellow officer and friend, Ralph Partridge, introduced him to the fabled Bloomsbury group. It was through Partridge that Brenan met Lytton Strachey and Dora Carrington. Brenan set out for Spain in the autumn of 1919 and lived in the primitive village of Yegen, more-or-less continuously until 1934. Partridge and Carrington, recently married, and Strachey visited him in 1920, and Carrington's fondness for Brenan is thought to have started on this trip. She carried on an extensive correspondence with Brenan for the next several years and in 1922 they had a brief affair, which was rapidly discovered by Partridge. There was a year of silence between the three, before reconciliation took place and often-stormy friendship continued for the remainder of their lives.

Brenan remained in Spain, marrying the American poetess Gamel Woolsey in 1930, and working on poetry and beginning several novels. In 1934 the Brenans left Yegen for Churriana and then for Gibraltar, seven weeks after the civil war started. They were unable to return to Spain until 1953. They spent this time in Aldbourne and Brenan expressed his feelings of exile from Spain by completing three major works on Spanish life and literature. On his return to Spain he began a series of autobiographical works, including South from Granada, A Life of One's Own, and A Personal Record.

In 1969 Brenan moved to the mountain village of Alhaurin el Grande. He was awarded the Order of Commander of the British Empire in 1982 and in 1984, after a brief stint in a nursing home, he was declared a living monument of Spain and was supported by the municipality of Alhaurin until his death in January 1987. He left his body to medical science (telling a friend this would avoid funeral charges) where it remained untouched at Málaga University until he was buried in the English Cemetery in Malaga next to Gamel Woolsey in 2001.