A Moment of War - Hardcover

Lee. Laurie

3.87

1,813 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067084019X ISBN 13: 9780670840199

Publisher: Viking, 1991

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In December 1937 a naive young Englishman slipped across the Spanish frontier to fight for the Republican cause. In the third volume of his autobiographical trilogy, which began with "Cider With Rosie", Laurie Lee describes a winter fighting with the International Brigade. This is a view of the Spanish Civil War from below, a tragi-comic account of rivalry and ribaldry in the ranks. Lee's fellow volunteers were an ill-starred posse of Scots, Cockneys, Welsh miners and Frenchmen who drank, gambled and pursued women when not engaging the enemy. Lee himself fell for the ravishing Eulalia, a passionate young partisan who reappeared in his life with an almost miraculous sense of timing to ease his misfortunes. He was arrested and three times narrowly escaped execution in a war which claimed half a million lives. Reflecting on what had compelled him to fight, Lee reasoned that he had wanted "the chance to make one grand gesture of personal sacrifice and faith".

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Review:

A work of lyrical intensity. Read it and salute one of Britain's finest writers (Daily Mail)

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)

About the Author:

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.

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), 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).