This second book of Laurie Lee's trilogy of auto-biographies finds him as a very young man, newly blessed with the freedoms of adulthood and looking to exploit that in adventure.
He leaves his village home to walk off to London, taking a detour towards the coast at Southampton, a pretty long trek. It begins in 1934 and sees him spend almost a year in London. The first two chapters covering this period, as he lodges with various families, has dalliances with young women that don't appear to ever be serious enough to devote many pages to, and does construction grunt work while being introduced to the nascent labour movements of the era. After these first two chapters, however, he heads to Spain. Arriving in the north of the country in Galicia, he walks south to Málaga and then east to Almuñécar.
It's standard travelogue fare for most of his journey through Spain. An Adventure through pre-civil war Spain and an introduction to it's customs through the eyes of someone unfamiliar with them. The last part of the book, however, sees a darker edge come in as it covers the first half of 1936. In all his time in Almuñécar there is a strong political undercurrent and an obvious building of tensions that he finds himself becoming slightly embroiled in, although mostly just a spectator. When civil war breaks out, it has a feeling of inevitability and despite given the option to leave the town, he stays for a while watching the first few weeks of the war play out in this republican village. His stay in Spain at this point is cut short though as a British Navy vessel arrives to pick up British stragglers and to get them out of an increasingly dangerous situation.
Theres an interesting point made that when he returns home he sees the significance of this civil war for the rest of Europe in a way that he had been too close to understand while he had been in Spain, and he endeavours to return to Spain to help the republican cause. The book ends with him having just crossed the border from France again. That will be covered in the final part of the trilogy, I assume.
This entry is far less lyrical in it's writing I noticed. Less enjoyable a read for that reason but more generally interesting because of the context of the impending war and the bubbling of socialism that seems to be apparent everywhere he goes.
Finished reading - 19/08/26