With his rich prose forever one of the most original contributions
to 20th century English literature, Laurie Lee remains, however,
best known for another rose: the village girl who 'baptized (him)
with her cidrous kisses' in the slumbrous shade of a summer
haystack. Cider With Rosie, his enchanting autobiographical account
of growing up in a delightfully haphazard Gloucestershire family,
has entranced generations of adults and children alike. Yet Lee's
sensuous apprehension of the world about him extended equally to
his travel writings, producing vivid portraits pulsating with his
hallmark evocative imagery. It was on the eve of the Spanish Civil
War that Lee first travelled to the Iberian Peninsula, later
returning in its wake to re-discover a country damaged yet
undaunted. Andalusia in particular, the subject of this short but
intensely observed book, is possessed of an indomitable and
original spirit forged by the marriage of a Moorish heritage with
European Catholicism. As Lee sallies forth from the trim English
streets of Gibraltar, guitar on his shoulder, no detail of the
primitive Mediterranean scene escapes his eye. The people he meets,
the fishermen, the beggars, the dark-veiled old women and the
ever-present smugglers on whom the starved economy of southern
Spain seemed at that time to subsist, are drawn with the inimitable
perception of a writer for whom exploration of the intrinsic
vibrance of language was fundamental to his vision. Laurie Lee died
in 1997. In recent years his mellifluous style has experienced
something of a fall in favour. Many deem it unfashionable today,
which seems a pity. Because from the sun-baked plains of Seville to
the Sierras and the magical city of Granada - 'like a rose
preserved in snow' - here is delivered the tale of a landscape as
eternally and seductively intoxicating as the luscious white wine
the author then drank at - oh wonder! - just six old pennies a
bottle. (Kirkus UK)
Andalusia is a passion - and fifteen years after his last visit Laurie Lee returned. 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-the paradoxes deep in the fiery bones of Spain.
Rich with kaleidoscopic images, A Rose for Winter is as sensual and evocative as the sun-scorched landscape of Andalusia itself.
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