Beginning with Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee writes evocatively of his idyllic childhood in the Cotswolds of the twenties, a world of rich sensuousness and native innocence. As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning picks up the story as he leaves his valley for London and then for Spain. There, equipped only with a violin and his wits, he crossed the dramatic landscape of a vibrant and still almost medieval Spain for which he developed an abiding affection. In the winter of 1937 he returned to a country now in the grip of Civil War and joined the International Brigade, describing in A Moment of War his journey into the dark side of Spain with unsparing honesty and poignancy.
The England of this text is one of silence, of hard work and necessary patience, of white roads, rutted by hooves and cartwheels, and innocent of oil and petrol. It is the rich, sensuous world of childhood and youth in a remote Cotswold village, a world that has mostly vanished.Prologo de Susan Hill.
'A Moment of War' is the magnificent conclusion to Laurie Lee's autobiographical trilogy begun in 'Cider with Rosie' and 'As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning'. It was December 1937 when the young Laurie Lee crossed the Pyrenees and walked into the bitter winter of the Spanish Civil War. With great vividness and poignancy, Lee portrays the brave defeat of youthful idealism in Auden's 'low dishonest decade'. Writing in the Literary Review, John Sweeney praised the memoir as, 'A great, heart-stopping narrative of one young Englishman's part in the war in Spain … crafted by a poet, stamping an indelible image of the boredom, random cruelty and stupidity of war'
Nacido en un mundo donde lo más veloz que se conocía era el caballo, el autor ve cómo, hacia 1920, desaparece un sistema de vida que había perdurado durante mil años. Entrañable memoria de una Inglaterra rural, menos opulenta y mucho mas feliz.
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning is the moving follow-up to Laurie Lee's acclaimed Cider with RosieAbandoning the Cotswolds village that raised him, the young Laurie Lee walks to London. There he makes a living labouring and playing the violin. But, deciding to travel further a field and knowing only the Spanish phrase for 'Will you please give me a glass of water?', he heads for Spain. With just a blanket to sleep under and his trusty violin, he spends a year crossing Spain, from Vigo in the north to the southern coast. Only the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War puts an end to his extraordinary peregrinations . . .'He writes like an angel and conveys the pride and vitality of the humblest Spanish life with unfailing sharpness, zest and humour' Sunday Times
From the author of Cider With Rosie, Village Christmas is a moving, lyrical portrait of England through the changing years and seasons. Laurie Lee left his childhood home in the Cotswolds when he was nineteen, but it remained with him throughout his life until, many years later, he returned for good. This collection brings to life the sights, sounds, landscapes and traditions of his home - from centuries-old May Day rituals to his own patch of garden, from carol singing in crunching snow to pub conversations and songs. Here too he writes about the mysteries of love, living in wartime Chelsea, Winston Churchill's wintry funeral and his battle, in old age, to save his beloved Slad Valley from developers. Told with a warm sense of humour and a powerful sense of history, Village Christmas brings us a picture of a vanished world.
"Los últimos días de mi infancia fueron tambien los últimos días de la aldea. Yo pertenecía a aquella generación que vio, por casualidad, el final de una vida milenaria. [...] Yo, mi familia, mi generacion, nacimos en un mundo de silencio; en un mundo de trabajo duro y necesaria paciencia, un mundo de espaldas dobladas hacia la tierra, cuidado manual de los cultivos, dependencia de la meteorologia y de la cosecha; un mundo en que las aldeas eran naves en paisajes vacios y las distancias entre ellas largas; un mundo de caminos marcados por cascos y ruedas de carretas, no hollados por la gasolina y el petroleo, apenas transitados por las personas y casi nunca por placer, por los que lo que mas rapido se movia eran los caballos." Laurie Lee revive en esta novela, una de las mas queridas y leidas por sus compatriotas, su infancia en una aldea de la campiña inglesa. Pese a nacer en 1914, un mes antes del comienzo de la Primera Guerra Mundial, sus recuerdos son amables y llenos de cariño hacia un mundo que iba a desaparecer.
