''I was nineteen years old, still soft at the edges, but with a confident belief in good fortune. I carried a small rolled-up tent, a violin in a blanket, a change of clothes, a tin of treacle biscuits, and some cheese. I was excited, vain-glorious, knowing I had far to go; but not, as yet, how far. As I left home that morning and walked away from the sleeping village, it never occurred to me that others had done this before me.'' Despite this romantic and optimistic opening, what Lee finds and describes is the most primitive and feudal country in Europe, a peninsula for the most part untouched by the modern world, a land of labor without dignity, a church devoid of compassion, and a country ripe for revolutionary change. There is humor here, and love, and adolescent awakening, but beneath the smoothly written surface is a foreboding sense of a savage future, a premonition that a war will come, which will not end soon. For Lee, as for much of the world, 1936 was the end of innocence, a fateful year when ''it was being learned again that men needed more than courage, anger, slogans, convictions, or even a just cause when they went to war.'' Thus Lee, innocently but inexorably, becomes entangled in the passionate, violent, and bloody struggle that was the Spanish Civil War. Along with Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, Lee's sequel to Cider with Rosie is a singular document, written with the excitement and wonder of a twenty-year-old, but infused with the wisdom of a young adult who sees what lies ahead and is capable of conveying to the reader how bad it will be.

洛瑞•李（1914——1997）

英国著名作家、诗人、编剧，被誉为“英国首屈一指的作家”，荣获大英帝国勋章、大西洋奖、作家协会游历奖、威廉•福伊尔诗歌奖、W.H.史密斯父子奖等，众多作品被公认为英语世界备受喜爱的旅行书籍。其回忆录代表作《萝西与苹果酒》（1959）、《当我在一个仲夏清晨出走》（1969）、《战争的一瞬间》（1991）合称为“自传三部曲”，成为长销不衰的经典作品。

另著有四卷诗集：《太阳是我的纪念碑》《蜡烛生光》《掌中诗》《我层层衣装的男人》，其他作品包括《献冬日以玫瑰》《我无法停留太久》《两个女人》等。