Starts out with a stopover for a while at boarding houses in London, which is something that interests me. After that, the author makes a sudden decision to head off to Spain, based on the fact that he knows one fairly useless sentence in the language. We get his take on the common Folk in a few cities and towns, where he works as a busker playing the fiddle for tips as well as food and drink. The final section sees him trapped in a village at the outset of the Spanish Civil War, where things aren't going very well; just as things look hopeless for him, a Deus ex Machina miracle sees him escaping home to Britain. Actually, Lee went on two separate walks. First of all he left the Cotswolds village of Cider With Rosie fame to walk to London, receiving much-needed advice from an experienced tramp on the way. Then, after losing his job as a building labourer, he decided to set off on another adventure, this time to Spain, taking his battered violin so that he could earn some money as a busker. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. I find much of the writing in this book outstanding, such perfect prose and intense imagery. I read it many years ago and have recently re-read it. Having forgotten how good it was, it was a pleasure to rediscover it. Set in the 1930s, the author leaves his family in the bucolic English Cotswolds and heads for Spain, crossing it on foot and with only his violin, busking as he goes. In February 1936 the Socialists win the election and the Popular Front begins. In the spring the villagers burn down the church, but then change their minds. In the middle of May there is a strike and the peasants come in from the countryside to lend their support, as the village splits between Fascists and Communists.

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning - Penguin Books UK As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning - Penguin Books UK

The epilogue describes Lee's return to his family home in Gloucestershire and his desire to help his comrades in Spain. He finally manages to make his way through France and crosses the Pyrenees into Spain in December 1937. The title of the book is the first line of the Gloucestershire folk song " The Banks of Sweet Primroses". [1] Critical responses [ edit ] Cleo's father finds him a job as a labourer and he rents a room, but has to move on as the room is taken over by a prostitute. He lives in London for almost a year as a member of a gang of wheelbarrow pushers. Once the building nears completion he knows that his time is up and decides to go to Spain because he knows the Spanish for "Will you please give me a glass of water?" In the mid-1930s, the nineteen year-old Lee sets out on foot from his Gloucestershire home, with a tin of biscuits and a violin, on his way to London via a hundred mile detour to the coast “as I’d never yet seen the sea.” Two years later he is fortuitously “rescued” off the coast of southern Spain by the Royal Navy trawling the Spanish beaches for stray Brits marooned between the warring factions of the Spanish Civil War. Lee’s narrative of what happens in between these events provides priceless images of life as experienced by a penniless wanderer in depression-era Britain and pre-modern Spain.Leaving behind the village he immortalised in Cider With Rosie, the 19 year-old Laurie sets out on the open road with a vague idea of reaching London and the American girlfriend who awaits him there. The books were first published thirty some years after the recounting of events. One hears a tone of nostalgia in the telling. I definitely advise listening to an audio version spoken by the author. The result is then transformed into pure art.

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning - Wikipedia

I felt it was for this I had come: to wake at dawn on a hillside and look out on a world for which I had no words, to start at the beginning, speechless and without plan, in a place that still had no memories for me. I'm interested to shortly read the final novel in the trilogy and see what Lee's description of the Civil War is; right now, when I think of it, I think of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls and Orwell's Homage to Catalonia. urn:lcp:asiwalkedoutonem00leel:epub:2688f7a9-a038-4ca5-b5a8-6ad0bfcd42b4 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier asiwalkedoutonem00leel Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t3b00412s Lccn 76086542 Ocr ABBYY FineReader 8.0 Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.16 Openlibrary_edition I'm recommending the book for its strong writing quality, more than the "action" itself. I was left puzzling that he relates conversations with locals, presumably in Spanish, where I was left with a bit of suspension-of-disbelief that he would be chatting away so soon. Over the course of a year he makes his way steadily east, with plenty of diversions. Lee meets up with various people who he finds something in common with, settling for a week or two, or moving on within days. He stays as long as he takes joy from being in a place, or with certain people, but happily moves on once that is over. He shares a lot of his year, but remains fairly discrete about his love life, happily sharing the details of other people though! The Spain that Lee describes is a poor, almost destitute country at this time, politically ripe for resolution as the rich and well separated from the poor.Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2010-03-02 23:47:06 Boxid IA109009 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II Donor Around a year after he left the village of Slad, he sets foot on Spanish soil for the first time and he sets off to explore the country. Wandering from place to place, he joins some German musicians in Vigo before moving onto Toledo where he stays with a poet from South Africa called Roy Campbell. Following a loose plan of walking around the coast of Spain takes him to Andalusia, Málaga and a brief sojourn into the British territory of Gibraltar. He finds work in a hotel over the winter and in the evenings joins the locals in a bar talking with them about the current political turmoil. Early in 1936 the Socialists win the election and the simmering tensions boil over into acts of revolt and then into open warfare. A British destroyer arrives to collect British subjects from coastal towns and villages and Lee says goodbye to Spain. Lee is also an observer of people. The first few chapters involve his walk to London and his experiences there. It is 1934 and there is still a depression. Lee recalls men who: