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A Moment of War (Penguin Modern Classics)

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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: 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... It was then that I began to sense for the first time something of the gaseous squalor of a country at war, an infection so deep it seemed to rot the earth, drain it of colour, life, and sound. This was not the battlefield; but acts of war had been committed here, little murders, small excesses of vengeance. The landscape was plagued, stained and mottled, and all humanity seemed to have been banished from it, Laurie Lee reading 'Cider with Rosie' complete and unabridged. ISIS audio books 1988. 7 disc set 7 h 55 min

In the chapter entitled - 'Death Cell: Albacete' this is the second time where Lee, is singled out and held in confinement. His passport is the cause of the problem; a year previously he had travelled to Morocco, visiting the exact places where Franco and his generals were plotting. a b c d e Barker, Juliet (2004). "Lee, Laurence Edward Alan". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (article) (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/66180. Archived from the original on 2 September 2020 . Retrieved 2 May 2017. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) 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.First a look at the descriptive writing: Lee, along with the hundreds of other men, collected at Figueras Castle are transported south to Valencia. Just as their train arrives, German and Italian warplanes fly in from Majorca, and bomb the city. Wishart family of artists". www.binsted.org. Archived from the original on 5 June 2019 . Retrieved 5 June 2019. The front cover of my book, I think shows a picture of Teruel, but Lee's writing far outweighs the cover photo: 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.

He works in clear, precise statements slowly building the panorama and action, so that you can see, feel and hear what he sees and feels; stark, vivid, pictures of scenes, events and people, a country destroyed by war. Lee's writing is so honest and skilled that I read this book for his writing, and only later realized there was an understated narrative. There has been some doubt about the historical accuracy of the book. Lee himself wrote that his diaries had been stolen and so he relied on memory for what is presented as an eyewitness account. 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. 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:

Summary

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]

Early life and works [ edit ] Laurie Lee's childhood home, Bank Cottages (now Rosebank Cottage), in the village of Slad. 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] I suspect that his purpose in writing the book was to bring home the horrors of war, and he does this remarkably well with his beautiful descriptive writing. His personal story is related as a very minor secondary element, which is how he wanted it. It also helps to explain why I was dismayed at the beginning; there was such an emotional gulf after the execution of the young deserter, and then his detailed account of the volunteers at Figueras. Nothing about his own feelings at almost being executed.

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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. As I Walked Out… finishes with Lee’s decision to return to Spain now that the Civil War was underway, to fight for the Republican cause, and making a difficult journey alone and on foot over the Pyrenees. This is, then, where A Moment of War starts as he is briefly taken in by a family and then promptly arrested as a spy. It wasn’t the done thing, to simply turn up on your own, most had their passage secured by the Communist Party, for example, and many people assumed that this young, blonde foreigner was German. He is eventually released and taken to be with other International Brigaders in Figueras. After a period of inactivity, he is arrested again. On inspection of his passport, it is revealed that he spent time in the South and in Morocco, the birthplace of Franco’s coup attempt at the time the plotting was taking place. Once again, he is released and returned to do, well, not much really. A Moment of War is the powerful and harrowing final book in Laurie Lee's acclaimed trilogy that began with Cider with Rosie For Art's Sake: Yasmin David". Devon Life. 24 August 2010. Archived from the original on 5 June 2019 . Retrieved 5 June 2019. Before light next morning, I was awakened by the sound of a bugle - a sound pure and cold, slender as an icicle, coming from the winter dark outside. In spite of our heavy sleep and grunting longing for more, some of us began to love that awakening, the crystal range of the notes stroking the dawn's silence and raising one up like a spirit. There were certainly those who cursed the little bleeder, but the Brigade was proud of its bugler; he was no brash, brassy, spit-or-miss blaster of slumber, but one who pitched his notes carefully to the freezing stars and drew them out like threads of Venetian glass."

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