Have you ever read a book that changed your life? Had a hero who shared your life? Wanted a second chance in life?

In the summer of 2012, Paul’s life is falling apart: he needs to change things; find some inspiration; he needs to walk out. Paul sets out across Spain to retrace the footsteps of his literary hero, Laurie Lee. He walks from the Atlantic Ocean in the north all the way down to the Mediterranean Sea. Lee made the same journey in 1935 and walked straight into the perfect storm of the Spanish Civil War and described the experience in his rite-of-passage book As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning.

Like so many, as a young man, Paul read the book and fell in love with both Spain and Lee. Paul, like Lee, has always dreamed of walking down those white, dusty roads, lined by orange groves, all the way to Seville.

Paul looks deep into the troubled soul of the English national-treasure writer on an emotional journey that stretches to breaking point his relationship with Lee.

Paul is the first writer to fully retrace Laurie Lee’s classic 1935 journey through Spain.

Paul Murphy is a writer with a special interest in Spain, its culture and people. He has lived, studied and worked in Spain and lived through seminal events such as the death of Franco in 1975 and an attempted coup in 1981, orchestrated in part by his landlord at the time, a Lieutenant General in the Spanish army. In 2014 Paul published his first book As I Walked Out Through Spain in Search of Laurie Lee. It is the first of a trilogy of books about Spain and Writers.

Paul has a BA Honours in Spanish Studies and in November 2012 was awarded an MA (Distinction) in Professional Writing from University College Falmouth. Paul studied with the Faber Academy Creative Writing School.

Paul speaks Spanish fluently. He spent two years as a marketing advisor to Ty Newydd: Wales National Writers’ Centre. September 2012 saw the publication of 26 Treasures, commissioned by the V&A museum. Paul contributed along with writers such as Alexander McCall Smith and Andrew Motion. The Anthology won the Literature Award in The British Book Design and Production Awards 2013.

Paul’s writing has appeared in The Guardian. He has spoken at the British Library about Spain in the 1930s. He has recently written a profile of the writer Malcolm Bradbury as part of Unesco 2013 City of Literature in partnership with the University of East Anglia Creative Writing School. He writes regularly for Travel and Lifestyle magazines.

"Paul Murphy has a long and deep personal connection with Spain which gives his reflections a good deal of authority. His writing style is sensitive and full of pleasing images and unlike many such books, he ‘inhabits' his subject."
– Philip Marsden, author of The Bronski House; The Levelling Sea.

"Paul Murphy’s book is a wonderfully readable narrative and a highly original approach to the ‘footsteps’ genre. It works beautifully…"
– Valerie Grove, author of Laurie Lee: The Well-Loved Stranger (Re-issued in May 2014 as The Lives and Loves of Laurie Lee).

Download the Press Release here.

Click here to read more in this article in Cornwall Today.