After graduating in Modern Languages at Cambridge, Michael Alpert joined the Bank of London and South America before leaving to teach French and Spanish in various secondary schools. He then became a lecturer and ultimately Professor at the University of Westminster until his retirement when he was granted the title of Emeritus. Thereafter he taught at University College London, King’s College London, Royal Holloway College and Birkbeck College.
In 1974 he was awarded his doctorate at Reading University for his thesis The Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 (later published by Cambridge University Press). He has published a number of books on the Spanish Civil War, which have appeared in English and in Spanish. His latest works are Franco and the Condor Legion: the Spanish Civil War in the Air (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) and The Spanish Civil War at Sea (Pen & Sword, 2021). At present he is working on a social history of Britain in the later 1930s, his third book for Pen & Sword)