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Narrative feature

The gentle intoxications of Laurie Lee

On the author's centenary, Jeremy Treglown wonders how his legacy stands up

28 June 2014

9:00 AM

28 June 2014

9:00 AM

He was always lucky, and he knew it: lucky in the secure rural intimacy of the upbringing described in Cider with Rosie; in the love of some passionate, clever women, whose guidance and support get rather less than their due in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning; and in having survived the Spanish civil war — the subject of A Moment of War — despite seeing action (though on his part this involved more seeing than action) in the terrible last battle of Teruel, and being imprisoned three times as a suspected spy.

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Cider with Rosie (Vintage Classics, £16.99, £7.99) and As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and A Moment of War (Penguin Modern Classics, £8.99 each) have been reprinted to mark Laurie Lee’s centenary on 26 June. Jeremy Treglown’s most recent book is Franco’s Crypt: Spanish Culture and Memory since 1936.

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