Contributor(s): Javier Marías | Distinguished Spanish novelist Javier Marías discusses his latest work with the historian Paul Preston. Javier Marías is the author of sixteen works in Spanish, which have been translated into forty-two languages. His latest novel, Thus Bad Begins, explores the cruel, tender punishments we exact on those we love. Paul Preston is Professor of Contemporary Spanish Studies and Director of the Cañada Blanch Centre at LSE. He is author of The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain. The Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies is part of the European Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science and is the focus of a flourishing interest in contemporary Spain in Britain.