A rose for winter

Andalusia is a passion - and fifteen years after his last visit Laurie Lee returned.

He found a country broken by 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 whitewashes slums, the cult of the bullfight, the exultation in death, the humour of hopelessness that paradoxes deep in the fiery bones of Spain.