Bøger af Laurie Lee

A Moment of War is the magnificent conclusion to Laurie Lee s autobiographical trilogy begun in Cider with Rosie and As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning .It was December 1937 when the young Laurie Lee crossed the Pyrenees and walked into the bitter winter of the Spanish Civil War. With great vividness and poignancy, Lee portrays the brave defeat of youthful idealism in Auden s low dishonest decade . Writing in the Literary Review, John Sweeney praised the memoir as, 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

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning is the moving follow-up to Laurie Lee's acclaimed Cider with RosieAbandoning the Cotswolds village that raised him, the young Laurie Lee walks to London. There he makes a living labouring and playing the violin. But, deciding to travel further a field and knowing only the Spanish phrase for 'Will you please give me a glass of water?', he heads for Spain. With just a blanket to sleep under and his trusty violin, he spends a year crossing Spain, from Vigo in the north to the southern coast. Only the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War puts an end to his extraordinary peregrinations . . .'He writes like an angel and conveys the pride and vitality of the humblest Spanish life with unfailing sharpness, zest and humour' Sunday Times 'There's a formidable, instant charm in the writing that genuinely makes it difficult to put the book down' New Statesman'A beautiful piece of writing' Observer

He found a country broken by the Civil War, but the totems of indestructible Spain survive: the Christ in agony, the thrilling flamenco cry-the pride in poverty, the gypsy intensity in vivid whitewashed slums, the cult of the bullfight, the exultation in death, the humour of hopelessness-the paradoxes deep in the fiery bones of Spain.

"Laurie and Johnny Lee have shown tremendous strength and courage since a tragic car accident claimed the life of their son, Josh. Their ability to share the story of Josh's death while dealing with their own personal grief is awe-inspiring. Encouraging others to "Just Finish the Race" is shared with love, respect, humility, and brutal honesty and it encourages others to realize that they will have battles but they just have to fight to overcome them. Laurie's poetry, which is raw and filled with emotions that only a parent who has lost a child could experience, is equally commendable. Just like their message, her poems tell what inspiration Josh was and how numerous people were touched by the way he lived his life."

Fairy Tales have sparked interest in readers and writers since days Medieval. Herein, is a collection of stories based on well-known tales of faerie. As with the Brothers Grimm, some stories are light and aerie, while others follow a darker path.Draw a chair close to the fire, warmed cider in hand, and let yourself be carried into the realm of fairyland.First up, is Rumpelstiltskin. Not an easy name to say, let alone spell. We'll call him Rom. Rather than a goblin eager to devour a newborn baby, our Rom has come to help. But who has he come for? And will they survive long enough to win happily ever after?Our next story is The Pied Piper. Children are disappearing. Morgan and Dale must search out the truth to save them, even though they may lose what is most precious to them. Difficult battles are worth the fight. Will saving the children be worth their sacrifices?Story three is Beast. We all love a Beauty and the Beast tale. This one is sure to please.The fourth story is Sleeping Beauty's Potion. Sleeping Beauty isn't to blame that a dark fairy placed a sleeping curse on her. But with a special potion, she isn't the one to sleep. Another lies on the bed in her stead until life has been drained. As long as a sacrifice remains, Sleeping Beauty will enjoy her youthful life. Is there no one who can bring an end to her wicked plot?The final story in Once Upon a Time in Fairyland is The Frog Curse. Catherine unwittingly finds herself a victim to a longstanding curse, one that turns its host into a frog. Unwilling to allow the curse to move to another victim, can Catherine escape the curse or is she fated to disappear into the misty wetlands forever?

The best legends are of mystical places, where unicorns and dragons exist.The unicorn Astebery, emissary of the Maker, has a special gift to bestow on her chosen champion.Estellyn doesn't understand why she would be chosen. She thinks she's just a farmer's daughter with a penchant for exploring. Prince Jeremian wants to be a champion to save his brother. Neither of them realize they are about to be drawn into an adventure where everything they love could be destroyed if they fail. To succeed, they'll have to venture into the Dark Realm where Lord Morgeth prepares an army to ravage Overworld.But there are other things lurking in the dark that could be used... for good or evil. Riven, once a goblin, has been changed into the form of a man to find the one who released the unicorn from Morgeth's trap. Other goblins are searching the Dark Realm for a baby dragon, whose power can unleash a rage of fire in Overworld. Good thing legends are not always what they seem.

Cinderella has her prince, but a fairy tale ending is not what she has in mind.Prince Robert of Camden doesn't want to go to the ball, but from the moment Cinderella turns up, he's caught in her web. Cinderella only has to keep him there forty days, the length of a royal engagement, until she can get to her heart's desire buried deep within the ruins of the Keep. Of course, princely blood will need to be spilled. Cinderella's spell is almost perfect, except for...Marissa DeGanne, his stepsister. The spell is not working on her, and she distracts Prince Robert. Cinderella needs to get Marissa away from Monmoore Palace. Out of sight, out of mind, and then the young woman can be properly killed. But Marissa won't give up without a fight, and she has a Guardian to help her.Can Robert and Marissa break Cinderella's spell, and have their own happily ever after?This tale has all the right elements: the prince, a stepsister, glass slippers, Cinderella, the Ball, and a fairy godmother in the form of a Guardian. It's the twists that will keep you on the edge of your seat, turning the pages, long after the final toll for midnight rings.

Cider with Rosie is a wonderfully vivid memoir of childhood in a remote Cotswold village, a village before electricity or cars, a timeless place on the verge of change. Growing up amongst the fields and woods and characters of the place, Laurie Lee depicts a world that is both immediate and real and belongs to a now-distant past.

'I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began.''This trilogy is a sequence of early recollections, beginning with the dazzling lights and sounds of my first footings on earth in a steep Cotswold valley some three miles long. For nineteen years this was the limit of my world, then one midsummer morning I left home and walked to London and down the blazing length of Spain during the innocent days of the early thirties. Never had I felt so fat with time, so free to go where I would. Then such indulgence was suddenly broken by the savage outbreak of the Civil War . . .' - Laurie Lee

'Magical' Daily Mail'I finished it with an ache in my heart and a tear in my eye' SpectatorFrom the author of Cider With Rosie, Village Christmas is a moving, lyrical portrait of England through the changing years and seasons. Laurie Lee left his childhood home in the Cotswolds when he was nineteen, but it remained with him throughout his life until, many years later, he returned for good. This collection brings to life the sights, sounds, landscapes and traditions of his home - from centuries-old May Day rituals to his own patch of garden, from carol singing in crunching snow to pub conversations and songs. Here too he writes about the mysteries of love, living in wartime Chelsea, Winston Churchill's wintry funeral and his battle, in old age, to save his beloved Slad Valley from developers. Told with a warm sense of humour and a powerful sense of history, Village Christmas brings us a picture of a vanished world.

'They are memorials to times and countries whose best is probably past and gone . . . I was lucky to have known them when I did, before darkness began to fall from the air.'In this much-loved volume, a mature Laurie Lee returns to the Gloucestershire childhood familiar to readers of Cider with Rosie, a world lost even at the time of writing to the march of twentieth-century technology. Lee also explores the post-war travels that took him to, amongst others, the Netherlands, Tuscany, Mexico and the West Indies. With pieces dating from the 1940s and 50s, Lee captures a world now for ever changed by war and mass tourism, 'when to be a traveller was not yet to be just a labelled unit'.

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.