I'm starting off this new blog with the author of the book that made a huge impression on me when I first read it in 1969 as a 19-year-old undergraduate. I was studying Spanish, and hadn't visited the country at this point. This book was the first thing to stir my interest in Spain, before I headed off a year later to San Sebastian for the first part of my year abroad. And the rest is history …..
Laurie Lee [Photo courtesy of www.secretserrania.com]
I first wrote about Laurie Lee, the author of the book I referred to above "As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning", back in 2021 for my website https://www.help-me-ronda.com.
I reproduce that article here:
***
LAURIE LEE – poet, womaniser and hispanophile
By The Culture Vulture
20 November 2021
Most famous for his autobiographical work Cider with Rosie, the Gloucestershire-born Lawrence Edward “Laurie” Lee, was also a great lover of Spain. The Culture Vulture reminisces about the three books Lee wrote about this country, pre-, during and post- Civil War.
"As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning"
I first ca
me across Laurie Lee as a 19-year-old while at university and anticipating my year abroad in Spain and Germany. In that year, 1969, Penguin published his book about his journey on foot across Spain in 1934, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning.
The book tells of Lee’s walk from La Coruña to Málaga armed with very little but his fiddle. We learn of his adventures en route, the kindness of strangers, and we can smell the poetic descriptions of the food he samples. His trip is cut short by the onset of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and he is repatriated to the UK, only to return later to fight against Franco in the International Brigades.
I couldn’t put the book down. It still rates as the best book about Spain that I’ve ever read, with Duende by Jason Webster, Driving Over Lemons by Chris Stewart, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway and Ghosts of Spain by Giles Tremlett coming in a distant second, third, fourth and fifth.
"A Moment of War"
Hungry for more, I got a copy of A Moment of War, when it was eventually published in 1991. It was a long wait, but worth it.
This book describes how, in December 1937, Lee set out for Spain to fight for the Republican cause against Franco’s Nationalists. He could not persuade anyone to help him and so eventually crossed the Pyrenees alone in a snowstorm, armed with little else but his beloved fiddle.
He then encountered Republican sympathisers who suspected him of being a Nationalist spy and imprisoned him. On the day scheduled for his execution a fortunate encounter led to his being released and joining the International Brigades.
The book then recounts Lee’s experiences as a Republican soldier in Figueres, Valencia, Tarazona, Madrid, Teruel and Barcelona. He left Spain in February 1938.
There has been some doubt expressed about the historical accuracy of the book. Lee himself wrote that his diaries had been stolen and so he relied on memory for what is presented as an eyewitness account. He wrote it some 50 years after the event, so some inaccuracy is likely.
Nevertheless, it’s still a fine book, with Lee’s background as a poet shining through his prose.
"A Rose for Winter"
Fifteen years after his last visit Laurie Lee returned to Spain and specifically Andalucía.
He found a country broken by the Civil War, but the totems of indestructible Spain survive: the Christ in agony, the thrilling flamenco cry, the pride in poverty, the gypsy intensity in vivid whitewashed slums, the cult of the bullfight, the exultation in death, the humour of hopelessness. All of these the paradoxes deep in the fiery bones of Spain.
Rich with kaleidoscopic images, A Rose for Winter, first published in 1971, is as sensual and evocative as the sun-scorched landscape of Andalucía itself.
Oddly the order of publication does not coincide with the chronology of events. This last book of his “Spanish Trilogy” was published before his Civil War memoir, although Lee has explained this anomaly. But who cares anyway?
Epilogue 
Laurie Lee died aged 82 in May 1997 in his beloved village of Slad in Gloucestershire.
He was so admired and cherished in Spain that an obituary appeared in the newspaper El País.
Click here: https://elpais.com/diario/1997/05/16/agenda/863733601_850215.html
Other links:
BOOKS and WRITERS - Help me, Ronda
Laurie Lee – poet, womaniser and hispanophile
© Paul Whitelock
Acknowledgements:
Amazon, Google, Penguin Books, Secret Serrania, Wikipedia
Tags:
Amazon, A Moment of War, Andalucía, A Rose for Winter, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, Chris Stewart, Culture Vulture, Driving Over Lemons, Duende, El País, Ernest Hemingway, fiddle, Ghosts of Spain, Giles Tremlett, Google, https://www.help-me-ronda.com, International Brigades, Jason Webster, La Coruña, Laurie Lee, Málaga, Paul Whitelock, Penguin Books, Slad, Spanish Civil War, The Sun Also Rises, Wikipedia