Rose Macaulay traveled down the Catalonian, Valencian, Andalusian, and Algrave coast in the 1940s, just after the Spanish Civil War, when the roads were still pitted with shell holes and the victors were rebuilding their war-torn churches. Fabled Shore, her fascinating account of this trip, has become one of the classics in travel writing. Steeped in Spanish history, and filled with stories of her meetings with children, fishermen, and the still-active anti-Francoists, it describes the coast of Spain before the tourists of sun-starved Northern Europe invaded, turning it into a commercial center. Benidorm was then a fishing village frequented by smugglers; Torremolinos, a small town boasting but a single hotel. Versed Spanish history and architecture, Macaulay (who attracted enormous attention, traveling as an unaccompanied woman in a car) has left a marvelous picture of Spain as it was and, in some ways, still is. "Rewarding for those who know and love Spain or for those who hope to do so someday."—Christian Science Monitor ·"A book of extraordinary charm."—The Nation About the The late Rose Macaulay was a well-known novelist and travel writer. They Were Defeated, another of her books, was recently reissued by Oxford University Press. Raymond Carr, also a well-known travel writer, is Warden of St. Anthony's College, Oxford. One of the classics of travel writing, describing the untraveled coast of Spain just after the Civil War
Author
Emilie Rose Macaulay, whom Elizabeth Bowen called "one of the few writers of whom it may be said, she adorns our century," was born at Rugby, where her father was an assistant master. Descended on both sides from a long line of clerical ancestors, she felt Anglicanism was in her blood. Much of her childhood was spent in Varazze, near Genoa, and memories of Italy fill the early novels. The family returned to England in 1894 and settled in Oxford. She read history at Somerville, and on coming down lived with her family first in Wales, then near Cambridge, where her father had been appointed a lecturer in English. There she began a writing career which was to span fifty years with the publication of her first novel, Abbots Verney, in 1906. When her sixth novel, The Lee Shore (1912), won a literary prize, a gift from her uncle allowed her to rent a tiny flat in London, and she plunged happily into London literary life. From BookRags: http://www.bookrags.com/biography/ros...
