Lee Laurie

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books In one of the great English war memoirs, we learn what it is to cross the Pyrenees through freezing snow to fight fascism in Spain; to narrowly escape execution by your own side; to kill a man with a borrowed rifle and feel nothing but shame. Moving and shrapnel-sharp, A Moment of War recalls the defeat of idealism; ‘that flush of youth which never doubts self-survival, that idiot belief in luck’.

A landmark collection of poems from the author of Cider with Rosie Laurie Lee is beloved for his writing on a lost rural world. His evocative poetry springs from his deep connection with nature, as he tracks the seasons changing and the years turning over. Yet Lee's poems also captured war, human relationships and distant places, informed by his own experiences of lives uprooted by change and conflict. Written during the course of his lifetime, the verses brought together in Collected Poems range over Lee playing his fiddle in a Spanish town; ecstatic in springtime of his beloved Slad valley; or digging for faith in the depths of winter. Gathered in one volume for the first time, and including a generous selection of previously unseen verses from Lee's archives, these timeless, poignant poems show him expressing the essence of life, love and loss.

How do you remember the summers of your childhood? For Laurie Lee they were flower-crested, heady, endless days. Here is an evocation of summer like no other - a remote valley filled with the scent of hay, jazzing wasps, blackberries plucked and gobbled, and games played until the last drop of dusk. Lee's joyful and stirring writing captures the very essence of England's golden season. Selected from the book Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee. VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. A series of short books by the world's greatest writers on the experiences that make us human. Also in the Vintage Minis series: Liberty by Virginia Woolf; Eating by Nigella Lawson; Swimming by Roger Deakin; and, Drinking by John Cheever.

V Jablečném víně s Rozárkou zavádí Laurie Lee čtenáře do krajiny svého dětství, do malebného údolíčka v Cotsvoldu v jihozápadní Anglii. Autor vypráví všechny veselé i hrůzostrašné příběhy, kterými tenkrát vesnice žila, začíná objevovat půvab dívek a opatrně vchází do světa dospělých. S jeho dětstvím ve dvacátých letech minulého století zároveň končí i tradiční venkov – odevěkému způsobu života, který vydržel devět století, udělala konec první světová válka a automobil. Laurie Lee povýšil autobiografické vzpomínky na nezapomenutelný čtenářský prožitek: spíš než o vykreslení vlastního portrétu mu šlo o zaznamenání detailů venkovského světa, jehož poslední dny viděl svěžím dětským pohledem, jak je už nikdy žádné dítě neuvidí.