At 20, Lee worked as an office clerk and a builder's labourer, and lived in London for a year before leaving for Vigo, in northwest Spain, in the summer of 1935. From there he travelled across Spain as far as Almuñecar on the coast of Andalusia. Walking more often than not, he eked out a living by playing his violin. His first encounter with Spain is the subject of As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969). During this period he met a woman, Wilma Gregory, who supported him financially, and also met Mary Garman and Roy Campbell. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936 Lee was picked up by HMS Blanche, a British destroyer from Gibraltar that was collecting marooned British subjects on the southern Spanish coast. Lee started to study for an art degree but returned to Spain in 1937 as an International Brigade volunteer. His service in the Brigade was cut short by his epilepsy. These experiences were recounted in A Moment of War (1991), an austere memoir of his time as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). According to many biographical sources, Lee fought in the Republican army against Franco's Nationalists. After his death there were claims that Lee's involvement in the war was a fantasy; the claims were dismissed as "ludicrous" by his widow. Lee met Lorna Wishart (sister of Mary) in Cornwall in 1937, and they had an affair (Lorna was married) lasting until she left him for Lucian Freud in 1943. They had a daughter, Yasmin David, together. Wishart's husband Ernest agreed to raise the girl as his own; she later became an artist. Before 1951 Lee worked primarily as a journalist and as a scriptwriter. During the Second World War he made documentary films for the GPO Film Unit (1939–40) and the Crown Film Unit (1941–1943). From 1944 to 1946 he worked as the Publications Editor for the Ministry of Information. In 1950 Lee married Catherine Francesca Polge, whose father was Provençal and whose mother was another of the Garman sisters, Helen; they had one daughter, Jessie. From 1950 to 1951 he was caption-writer-in-chief for the Festival of Britain, for which service he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1952. The success of the autobiographical novel Cider with Rosie in 1959 allowed Lee to become a full-time independent writer. It