A Moment of War (Penguin Modern Classics)

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As the daylight came, I left Serrano huddled by the fire, and went outside and got my first view of Teruel. It stood some five miles distant and slightly above us, a gleaming city of ice, its cathedral, castle, turrets, towers, all dusted with silver, shimmering light. A city of silence, without dimension; it could have been a life-sized mural, or an intimately carved ivory for some medieval Cardinal or Pope. A perfect relic, in its brilliant stillness, chaste and bloodless as a martyr's tomb. Yet already, I was to learn, within the last few days, its citizens were walling up and massacring each other."

Lee manages to covey intimately, the muddle, the mistakes, the hierarchy, the comeradary of men at war.The front cover of my book, I think shows a picture of Teruel, but Lee's writing far outweighs the cover photo: In the 1960s, Lee and his wife returned to Slad to live near his childhood home, where they remained for the rest of his life, though for many years he retained a flat in Chelsea, coming to London to work during the week and returning to Slad at weekends. Lee revealed on the BBC1 Wogan show in 1985 that he was frequently asked by children visiting Slad as part of their O-Level study of Cider with Rosie "where Laurie Lee was buried", assuming that the author was dead. Passino, Carla (9 September 2019). "Laurie Lee's childhood home, the house that inspired 'Cider with Rosie', is up for sale". Country Life. Archived from the original on 10 September 2019 . Retrieved 2 September 2020. A Moment of War (1991) by the British author Laurie Lee is the last book of his semi-autobiographical trilogy. It covers his months as a combatant in the Spanish Civil War from 1937 to 1938. [1] The preceding books of the trilogy are Cider With Rosie (1959) and As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969). Another weird fact is that, after spending quite a few days at Albacete, he never mention André Marty, the much-feared psychotic French Communist who was in charge of the International Brigades. And he keeps talking about the Azaña Largo Caballero as though it were one person. And he tell us that Madrid is a mile-high, when, in fact, the altitude of Madrid is only about a third of that. Or perhaps he was thinking of Denver...

I was at that flush of youth which never doubts self-survival, without which illusion few wars would be possible." (P.12) The audiobook I listened to is read by Stephen Thorne, not the author. Thorne’s narration is fine. It’s good. It’s easy to follow, but it doesn’t reach halfway up to the magnificence of the author’s own reading of his books. It simply does not have Laurie Lee’s superb inflection. The essence of prose poetry is lost. In addition, when you’ve got a word that is French, I think it should be pronounced as the French do. It irritated me that “la grippe” is by Thorne pronounced as the English word “gripe”, which has a very different sound and meaning! I have given the narration three stars. In 1993, A Moment of War was chosen as a Notable Book of the Year by the editors of the New York Times Book Review. [13]Courtauld, Simon (3 January 1998). "A Not Very Franco Account". The Spectator. Archived from the original on 22 March 2020 . Retrieved 22 March 2020. An absolutely remarkable memoir, I guess continuing from Cider with Rosie but a world away in subject, tone and style despite being the same author.

Sping '36. Melilla. Ceuta. Tetuan. That's where it was all cooked up, wasn't it?" says the Intelligence officer, Captain Sam. The officer allows him to write letters to his next of kin. He is given the comfortable treatment of a man on death row. He is taken to a small courtyard, "snow falling from a sunset sky." The success of the autobiographical novel Cider with Rosie in 1959 allowed Lee to become a full-time independent writer. It continues to be one of the UK's most popular books, and is often used as a set English literature text for schoolchildren. The work depicts the hardships, pleasures and simplicity of rural life in the time of Lee's youth; readers continue to find the author's portrayal of his early life vivid and evocative. Lee said that the creation of the book took him two years, and that it was written three times. With the proceeds Lee was able to buy a cottage in Slad, the village of his childhood. [14] Poetry [ edit ] Lee met Lorna Wishart (sister of Mary) in Cornwall in 1937, and they had an affair (Lorna was married) lasting until she left him for Lucian Freud in 1943. They had a daughter, Yasmin David, together. Wishart's husband Ernest agreed to raise the girl as his own; she later became an artist. [11] [12] [6] A Moment of War is the powerful and harrowing final book in Laurie Lee's acclaimed trilogy that began with Cider with Rosie

Lee's first love was always poetry, though he was only moderately successful as a poet. Lee's poems had appeared in the Gloucester Citizen and the Birmingham Post, and in October 1934 his poem 'Life' won a prize from, and publication in, the Sunday Referee, a national paper. [7] [15] Another poem was published in Cyril Connolly's Horizon magazine in 1940 and his first volume of poems, The Sun My Monument, was published in 1944. This was followed by The Bloom of Candles (1947) and My Many-coated Man (1955). Several poems written in the early 1940s reflect the atmosphere of the war, but also capture the beauty of the English countryside. The poem "Twelfth Night" from My Many-coated Man was set for unaccompanied mixed choir by American composer Samuel Barber in 1968. I won’t write too much for this review, largely because all the issues I had with ‘When I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning’ still stand here and I don’t want to overly repeat myself from a review I’ve just written. There are a few reasons I’ve downgraded ‘A Moment of War’ even further. Firstly, there are very few sections where Lee’s prose gets a chance to shine here due to the subject of this book, so while the previous in the trilogy was slightly dull, it always had this going for it, which is much more (but not entirely) absent here and so isn’t able to carry the book’s weaker components. Laurence Edward Alan Lee, MBE (26 June 1914 – 13 May 1997) was an English poet, novelist and screenwriter, who was brought up in the small village of Slad in Gloucestershire. Laurie Lee (1914–1997) – English poet and author", TomFolio Books, archived from the original on 26 October 2009 As a young man Lee, despite carrying the burden of two girl's names, decided he had to go and fight fascists in Spain. He crossed the frontier on foot from France:

Laurie Lee died of bowel cancer at home in Slad on 13 May 1997, at the age of 82. He is buried in the local churchyard. [7] Works [ edit ] Books [ edit ] War isn't all about fighting; there is plenty of drudgery and idleness to go around, and seldom a glance at the enemy except when he flies over and bombs hell out of you. Lee dutifully reports on this aspect of his service, while giving descriptions of his fellow men-at-arms and the hardships of his daily routine. All is not lost: Lee does manage to get laid a couple of times, and occasionally they are able to scrape up enough cash for a meal in a bar. Finally, in the waning hours of the battle for Teruel, Lee comes to grips with the enemy, but there is no gruesome detail. Lee sees all this through a fog of war. Apparently he kills an enemy, but does not elaborate on how that went down. He didn't feel particularly proud of his kill, and in fact is showing disillusionment with his decision to fight when he writes: Other works include A Rose for Winter, about a trip he made to Andalusia 15 years after the civil war; Two Women (1983), a story of Lee's courtship of and marriage to Kathy, daughter of Helen Garman; The Firstborn (1964), about the birth and childhood of their daughter Jessy (christened Jesse); and I Can't Stay Long (1975), a collection of occasional writing.

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I am repeating myself, since what I wrote earlier disappeared all of a sudden. I had heard that sometimes people adorned their own biography, claiming participation in historical events in which they had no pat at all. This 'autobiographical' memoir of the war is a good example of that sort of deception. I would argue that Mr. Lee had absolutely no participation in the Spanish Civil War. The inconsistencies and contradictions are all too obvious. Let's look at the narrative: Oliver-Jones, Stephen (2018), Laurie Lee 1914-1997 A Bibliography, Tolworth, Surrey: Grosvenor House Publishing Ltd I fell in love with Laurie Lee's writing a few years ago, reading 'Cider with Rosie'. I begun reading Lee because he was from a village close to where I live, in Gloucestershire. Cider with Rosie, did not disappoint my want for nostalgia for my beloved Stroud(ish), however I stopped here for a while before reading 'As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning', which I knew would have very little to say about the rolling hills of Slad. However I started seeing a Spanish guy, and so, with a little more relevance to my life again, the literary journey continued. Grove, Valerie (18 December 2019). "Laurie Lee's rural myths". New Statesman. Archived from the original on 22 January 2020 . Retrieved 2 September 2020. Lee provided a great deal of valuable support to the Brotherhood of Ruralists in their attempts to establish themselves in the 1970s, and he continued to do so until his death; his essay Understanding the Ruralists opened the Brotherhood's major 1993 retrospective book. Indeed, it was Lee who is said to have given them the name "Ruralists." [17]