A passionate ode to the magic of Spain, composed by one of its most ardent admirers

Fifteen years after the events described in his acclaimed autobiographies, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and A Moment of War, Laurie Lee returned to Spain, the land of his youth and experience. He found a country bowed but not broken, where the heavy gloom of the recent past was shot through with the vibrant rays of tradition: the exquisite ecstasy of the flamenco, the pomp and circumstance of the bullfight, the eternal glory of Christ and church.

From the smuggler’s paradise of Algeciras to the Moorish majesty of Granada, Lee paints the wonders of Spain with a poet’s brush. To read A Rose for Winter is to be transported to one of the most enchanted places on earth.