A Moment of War (Penguin Modern Classics)

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By the time you get to ‘A Moment Of War’ you’ll adore Laurie’s fabulous powers of description and understated bravery. crafted by a poet, stamping an indelible image of the boredom, random cruelty and stupidity of war'. I don't really care if the book is all truthful or not – the episodes with the 16 year old girl Eulalia certainly seem like the fantasies of an old man and I'm sure he wasn't so often almost killed as he states, but the Spanish civil war was over 50 years old by the time Lee was writing about it and no-one's memory stands up to that much time, no matter how memorable the incidents. Lee's new book, "A Moment of War: A Memoir of the Spanish Civil War," is a bleak monument to a conflict that is remembered now mainly as an augury of World War II. With a laid-in colour photograph of the author at a signing session, plus a 1991 review of A Moment of War and a flyer from the 1995 Cheltenham Festival of Literature announcing a talk by Laurie Lee about A Moment of War.

Then follow weeks of inefficient, incompetent organizational mismanagement on the part of the Republican militia. They swooped low and fast, guided perhaps by the late moon on the water, on the rooftops and railway tracks. the Loyalists (his earlier trip had ended with his being plucked from the southern coast by a British destroyer at the outbreak of the civil war), Mr. Please get in touch and we will do our best to source your book, no matter how unusual or specialist. Then he is sent to the front again and takes part in the fighting for Teruel where he kills Nationalist soldiers.I was at that flush of youth which never doubts self-survival, without which illusion few wars would be possible. At the sight of the instrument faces softened, eyes brightened, sleeping children were awoken with pinches. Overall I enjoyed this book very much, and the trilogy marks one of my favourite literary adventures. Detachment is the dominant note and is carried throughout the book despite or because of mid-winter crossing of the Pyrennes, abrupt arrests and imprisonments, absurd experiences in camps, air raids and artillery shelling, and one intense experience on the front line - around twenty pages from the end of the book - that two an oddity a memoir of war in which the main business of war always seems to be taking place away from the fighting, in that way it is distinct from Homage to Catalonia, indeed because of that statement of detachment Lee's book put me in mind of Goodbye to Berlin. 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.

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. Written long after parts one and two and quite a short volume, this still is a very interesting read with a lot of the traits that is Lee's great narrative.His other works include The Voyage of Magellan (1948), The Firstborn (1964), I Can't Stay Long (1975), and Two Women (1983).