Fidelity, in my youth, was largely a question of bad roads and poor bus services

Fidelity, in my youth, was largely a question of bad roads and poor bus services - the crack-up began when we began to move about. Now mobility and overcrowding offer so many alternative choices and proliferation of loves that faithfulness to one person almost suggests dim-wittedness.

L.Lee, 'Notes on marriage' Village Christmas and other notes on the English year (2015), 122

One finds almost every type of our landed gentry

In Robert of Berkeley's long line of heirs and collaterals, one finds almost every type of our landed gentry - from the dull unremembered, the studious and devout, the plain country farmer and fiery squire, to the schemer, eccentric, cultured patron of the arts, military hero, rakehell and bounder. Many were fortunate enough to live lives of sylvan quiet. Others found their castle placed in the canon's mouth.

L.Lee, 'Lords of Berkeley Castle' Village Christmas and other notes on the English year (2015), 107

There was also that all pervasive sense of eroticism that goes with the boredom of war

It was the fag end of the war, a quiet conspiratorial time with no secret lives; we were all in it, and by now we knew most things about each other – we shared and stuffed ourselves on them. There was also that all pervasive sense of eroticism that goes with the boredom of war, that freewheeling fantasizing that goes with displaced persons who are displaced through no fault of their own. The girls fell on the few men with an urgent and hungry disdain. They tidied the rooms of the bachelors and cooked for them. They took our shirts home at weekends and washed them.

L. Lee, 'Chelsea towards the end of the last war' Village Christmas and other notes on the English year (2015), 88

For on that shadowed catafalque rests the print of a spirit who when alive seemed to be all things living

For on that shadowed catafalque rests the print of a spirit who when alive seemed to be all things living - who was lover, soldier, artist, wit, master of language and prince of the will, who took fate by the heels and the scruff of the neck and shook it roughly into shape and order, defying its betrayals, indifference and threats, commanding its obedience by obstinacy and bluff, outstaring its masks of disaster till it yielded to victory ad danced to the tune he wanted.

L.Lee, 'The lying in state' Village Christmas and other notes on the English year (2015), 20

Of all moments in childhood this must remain the most haunting

And when it happened, it was like the opening of a flower in the dark, the sudden ripening of fruit on the bough. A minute ago there was just the limp dead stocking. Now it hung heavy, bulging with gifts. Of all moments in childhood this must remain the most haunting, most unforgettable: the drowsy hand in the cold of the winter’s dawn reaching out as a test of hope, then suddenly finding itself filled with this weight of love, bestowed silently while it slept.

L.Lee, 'Village Christmas' Village Christmas and other notes on the English year (2015), 9

Barcelona had been the clever, rich uncle, aloof, scarcely Spanish at all

After the medieval towns and villages of central Spain, Barcelona revealed an alien industrial Europe, long squat suburbs and shabby concrete factories - a language far more cynical, knowing and enervating than the primitive naiveties of Castile.

The small greedy streets crossed each other like lines in a ledger, leading finally to the grand ruled boulevards. Compared with dandy, spendthrift Madrid, Barcelona had been the clever, rich uncle, aloof, scarcely Spanish at all. All its fine calculations, now, seemed blurred, blotted and cancelled. Across banks and offices sagged the war's first banner of defiance and challenge, muted and fading as the grey figures in the streets.

L. Lee, A moment of war (1991), 166-7

The chance to make one grand, uncomplicated gesture of personal sacrifice

You could pick out the British by their nervous jerking heads, native air of suspicion, and constant stream of self-effacing jokes. These, again, could be divided up into the ex-convicts, the alcoholics, the wizened miners, dockers, noisy politicos and dreamy undergraduates busy scribbling manifestos and notes to their boyfriends. ... I believe, we shared something else, unique to us at the time - the chance to make one grand, uncomplicated gesture of personal sacrifice and faith which might never occur again. Certainly, it was the last time this century that a generation had such an opportunity before the fog of nationalism and mass slaughter closed in.

L. Lee, A moment of war (1991), 45-46