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'If ever I saw blessing in the air I see it now in this still early
day...' Laurie Lee is beloved for his writing on a lost rural
world. His evocative poetry springs from his deep connection with
nature, as he tracks the seasons changing and the years turning
over. Yet Lee's poems also captured war, human relationships and
distant places, informed by his own experiences of lives uprooted
by change and conflict. Written during the course of his lifetime,
the verses brought together in Collected Poems range over Lee
playing his fiddle in a Spanish town; ecstatic in springtime of his
beloved Slad valley; or digging for faith in the depths of winter.
Gathered in one volume for the first time, and including a generous
selection of previously unseen verses from Lee's archives, these
timeless, poignant poems show him expressing the essence of life,
love and loss.
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning is the moving follow-up to
Laurie Lee's acclaimed Cider with Rosie Abandoning 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
'There's a formidable, instant charm in the writing that genuinely
makes it difficult to put the book down' New Statesman 'A beautiful
piece of writing' Observer
A Moment of War is the powerful and harrowing final book in Laurie
Lee's acclaimed trilogy that began with Cider with Rosie Laurie Lee
was still a young man when he decided to fight for the Republican
cause in Spain's civil war. But though he braved icy, storm-swept
mountains alone to contact Republican sympathisers, he was
immediately suspected of being a Nationalist spy. Imprisoned and
almost executed by his own side, he eventually joined the
International Brigade. This is the story of his experiences as a
Republican soldier, fighting for the losing side in a doomed war.
'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' -
Literary Review 'This story aches with unforgotten cold and
trembles with unforgotten terror' -Guardian Laurie Lee has written
some of the best-loved travel books in the English language. Born
in Stroud, Gloucestershire, in 1914, he was educated at Slad
village school and Stroud Central School. At the age of nineteen he
walked to London and then travelled on foot through Spain, where he
was trapped by the outbreak of the Civil War. He later returned by
crossing the Pyrenees, as he recounted in A Moment of War. In 1950
he married Catherine Polge and they had one daughter. Laurie Lee
published four collections of poems: The Sun My Monument (1944),
The Bloom of Candles (1947), My Many-Coated Man (1955) and Pocket
Poems (1960). His other works include The Voyage of Magellan
(1948), A Rose for Winter (1955), The Firstborn (1964), I Can't
Stay Long (1975) and Two Women (1983). He also wrote three
bestselling volumes of autobiography: Cider with Rosie (1959),
which has sold over six million copies worldwide, As I Walked Out
One Midsummer Morning (1969) and A Moment of War (1991). He died in
May 1997.
'I remember, too, the light on the slopes, long shadows in tufts and hollows, with cattle, brilliant as painted china, treading their echoing shapes 'Cider With Rosie is a wonderfully vivid memoir of Laurie Lee' s childhood and youth in a remote Cotswold village. From the moment he is set down in the long grass, 'thick as a forest and alive with gras shoppers', he depicts a word that is both tangibly real yet belonging to a now distant past.
A beautiful new edition of Laurie Lee's celebrated autobiographical
trilogy: Cider with Rosie, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning
and A Moment of War 'I was set down from the carrier's cart at the
age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my
life in the village began.' 'This trilogy is a sequence of early
recollections, beginning with the dazzling lights and sounds of my
first footings on earth in a steep Cotswold valley some three miles
long. For nineteen years this was the limit of my world, then one
midsummer morning I left home and walked to London and down the
blazing length of Spain during the innocent days of the early
thirties. Never had I felt so fat with time, so free to go where I
would. Then such indulgence was suddenly broken by the savage
outbreak of the Civil War . . .' - Laurie Lee
How do you remember the summers of your childhood? For Laurie Lee
they were flower-crested, heady, endless days. Here is an evocation
of summer like no other - a remote valley filled with the scent of
hay, jazzing wasps, blackberries plucked and gobbled, and games
played until the last drop of dusk. Lee's joyful and stirring
writing captures the very essence of England's golden season.
Selected from the book Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee 'An
enchanting book, an exquisite farewell, not only to childhood, and
boyhood, but also to an England that has vanished' J.B. Priestly
VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.
'Magical' Daily Mail 'I finished it with an ache in my heart and a
tear in my eye' Spectator 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. 'Brings to life the landscapes and traditions of Lee's home
in Gloucestershire, from centuries-old May Day rituals and
carol-singing on Christmas Eve, to his battle in old age to save
his beloved Slad valley from developers' Guardian 'Simply written,
observant and shot through with Lee's characteristic humility ...
Against his whitewashed prose are touches of beauty' The Times
Literary Supplement
'They are memorials to times and countries whose best is probably
past and gone . . . I was lucky to have known them when I did,
before darkness began to fall from the air.' When Laurie Lee first
left his country village aged nineteen, he discovered a delight in
the outside world that remained undiminished throughout his writing
life. This enchanting collection of his 'first loves and
obsessions' brings together pieces including recollections of his
Gloucestershire childhood celebrated in Cider With Rosie;
reflections on life, love and death, such as a moving report from
the tragic Welsh village of Aberfan; and evocative travel writings
on Tuscany, Mexico and the West Indies, amongst others, before they
were transformed by mass tourism. Together they capture a world
that is lost forever. 'One of Britain's finest writers' Daily Mail
'There's a formidable, instant charm in the writing that genuinely
makes it difficult to put the book down' New Statesman
Poet Laurie Lee was born in 1914 in a small Cotswold village and
grew up during a time of change when the rural traditions of past
centuries were being swept aside in the path of twentieth-century
progress. His autobiography Cider with Rosie, a poetic evocation of
his childhood, has become a modern classic both in the United
Kingdom and in America and is here imaginatively adapted for the
stage by James Roose-Evans.4 women, 5 men
A moving portrait of the landscape that shaped the life of Laurie
Lee, the beloved author of Cider With Rosie 'Before I left the
valley I thought everywhere was like this. Then I went away for 40
years and when I came back I realized that nowhere was like this.'
Laurie Lee walked out of his childhood village one summer morning
to travel the world, but he was always drawn back to his beloved
Slad Valley, eventually returning to make it his home. In this
portrait of his Cotswold home, Laurie Lee guides us through its
landscapes, and shares memories of his village youth - from his
favourite pub to winter skating on the pond, the church through the
seasons, local legends, learning the violin and playing jazz
records in the privy on a wind-up gramophone. Filled with wry
humour and a love of place, Down in the Valley is a writer's
tribute to the landscape that shaped him, and where he found peace.
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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