Fabled Shore: From the Pyrenees to Portugal

by Rose Macaulay

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

Genres: Travel, Spain, Nonfiction, Portugal

248 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1973

About the 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...

Reviews

[Julian Worker · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a travel book from 1949 when the English writer Rose Macaulay made a journey in a car she drove herself. Macaulay started on the Mediterranean coast at the French frontier with Spain and finished at the western end of the Portuguese Algarve on the Atlantic Coast.

The physical and mental scars of the Spanish Civil War were still present as were the potholes in the roads. Churches were being rebuilt. A single female traveller was an unusual sight.

The past is everywhere in Spain and the author can feel and appreciate this history, searching for places that aren't in the guidebooks and can't always be found - they are there somewhere and it makes me want to go there and try to find those same places. Rose Macaulay must have read a lot of history books before her journey.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had been hunting for this for ages and then managed to borrow a 1951 edition from Highgate Institute (Amazon has it for over £16!)
If you know the coast of Spain, read this and weep. It is an evocative account of what things were like in the 1940s and although it is rather repetitive it is beautifully written and, at times, very funny (e.g. the section about Gibraltar). It makes you reflect on places you know as they are now, and as they were before tourism hit the coast, which some of the older people must still be able to remember. Rose Macaulay is a brilliant writer, not nearly well-known enough, I think.

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I flew through this before my trip to the Algarve. And then read the Algarve chapter again while I was there. Perfect!

[Dvora Treisman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading Spanish names of Catalan places and people did not sit well with me. I find it hard to believe that all those names were turned into Spanish, even kings such as Jaume I, etc. Perhaps they were, but my response to them remained negative. It was involuntary -- emotional. I tried. I did not succeed.

Besides the Spanish names, most of what Macaulay was talking about didn’t appeal to me. This book is an inventory of present places that once were Greek and Roman. It is a long list of Greek and Roman place names, ending up with the dreaded Spanish names. The rest of the commentary was of buildings – architectural and decorative styles. These also read like lists. There was a little bit about the people, but very little. When she was in Catalunya, I found the reading vaguely (but not very) interesting. But once she passed down into Valencia and Murcia, I was no longer interested. These are places I have never been and even if I intended to go, what she had to say had nothing to say to me. I don’t care what the Greeks and Romans called these places.

I might have carried on anyway, because I did so like the other book of hers that I’ve read (Towers of Trebizond), but my basic antipathy for Spain came through. I like Catalunya (it is a mixed emotional thing for me, part love, part betrayal) but I dislike Spain. So a little after half way through, I quit. If I had kept at it, it could have taken me a year to get to the end (whenever I picked the book up I wanted to put it back down), and life is too short for that.

It isn't a bad book, Macaulay is very well educated and intelligent and writes well, just that I didn't like it.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful - a must-read if you are travelling to Spain, see http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/201...