Thanks Emma. I liked his simple, artless prose and his plain speaking. It was said that contemporary writers of his time laughed at him at first, because there was so little that was "literary" about his prose. That is precisely what appealed to me. I think that underneath the tough talk, there was a gentle, humane man with a profound commitment to decency and compassion. He also had an endearing line in self irony. The passage, in which he describes being shot in "Homage to Catalonia", has a deadpan sense of gallows humour about it.