Red Sky at Sunrise: Cider with Rosie; As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning; A Moment of War

4.4/5 ( ratings)

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 Summer 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.

Cider With Rosie: "A prose poem that flashes and winks like a prism." - H.E. Bates

As I Walked Out One Summer Morning: "The vivid, sensitive, irresistibly readable story of what happened after he left home." - Daily Mail

A Moment of 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." - John Sweeney in the Literary Review

The cover shows a portrait of Laurie Lee by Anthony Devas in the National Portrait Gallery, London