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Laurie Lee

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Laurie Lee9-300

Laurie Lee. Courtesy Laurie Lee Official Centenary Website.

Laurie Lee
Born 26 June 1914
Stroud, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom
Died 13 May 1997 (aged 82)
Slad, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom
Occupation Author, screenwriter, poet

Laurence Edward Alan "Laurie" Lee MBE (26 June 1914 - 13 May 1997) was an English poet, memoirist, and screenwriter.

Life[]

Youth and education[]

Born in Stroud, Lee moved with his family to the village of Slad in 1917, the move with which Cider with Rosie opens. Lee was raised in Slad and went to Marling School, Gloucestershire.[1]

After fighting in the First World War with the Royal West Kent regiment, Lee's father Reg did not return to the family. Lee and his brothers grew up loving their mother's family, the Lights, and intensely disliking the Lee side. At 12, Laurie went to the Central Boys' School in Stroud. In his notebook for 1928, when he was 14 he listed "Concert and Dance Appointments", for at this time he was in demand to play his violin at dances.

Depression and war[]

He left the Central School at 15 to become an errand boy at a Chartered Accountant's in Stroud. In 1931 he discovered the Whiteway Colony, 2 miles from Slad, a colony founded by Tolstoyan anarchists. It gave him his first smattering of politicization and was where he met composer Benjamin Frankel and the "Cleo" who appears in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning.[2]

In 1933 he met Sophia Rogers, an "exotically pretty girl with dark curly hair" who had moved to Slad from Buenos Aires, an influence on Lee who said later in life that he only went to Spain because "a girl in Slad from Buenos Aires taught me a few words of Spanish." At 20 he worked as an office clerk and a builder's labourer, and lived in London for a year.

In the summer of 1935 he left for Vigo, in northwest Spain. 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.[3] His earliest encounter with Spain is the subject of As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969). After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, Lee was picked up by a British destroyer from Gibraltar that was collecting marooned British subjects on the southern Spanish coast.

During this period, he met a woman who supported him financially. He 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 (1936–39). According to many biographical sources, Lee fought in the Republican army against Francisco 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.)[4]

Career[]

Before 1951, Lee worked primarily as a journalist and as a scriptwriter. During World War II he made documentary films for the GPO Film Unit (1939–40) and the Crown Film Unit (1941–43). From 1944 to 1946 he worked as the Publications Editor for the Ministry of Information.[5] In 1950 Lee married Catherine Francesca Polge, whose father was Provençal and whose mother was one of The Garman Sisters; they had one daughter, Jessie. From 1950 to 1951 he was caption writer-in-chief for the Festival of Britain.

Cider with Rosie continues to be one of the UK's most popular books, and is sometimes used as a set English literature text for schoolchildren. It captured images of village life from a bygone era of innocence and simplicity. Lee said it took him two years and was written three times. With the proceeds Lee was able to buy a cottage in Slad, the village of his childhood.

Lee provided a great deal of valuable support to the Brotherhood of Ruralists in their attempts to establish themselves in the 1970s, and he continued to do so until his death; his essay Understanding the Ruralists opened the Brotherhood's major 1993 retrospective book. Indeed, it was Lee who is said to have given them the name "Ruralists."[6]

Final years[]

In the 1960s, Lee and his wife returned to Slad to live near his childhood home, where they remained for the rest of his life. Lee revealed on the BBC1 Wogan Show in 1985 that he was frequently asked by children, visiting Slad as part of their O-Level study of Cider with Rosie, enquiring "where Laurie Lee was buried" assuming that the author was dead.

Lee died of bowel cancer in Slad on 13 May 1997, at the age of 82. He is buried in the local churchyard.

Writing[]

Laurie_Lee_interview_-_Thames_Television_-_1975

Laurie Lee interview - Thames Television - 1975

Lee's most famous work was an autobiographical trilogy which consisted of Cider with Rosie (1959), As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) and A Moment of War (1991). The first volume recounts his childhood in the Slad Valley. The second deals with his leaving home for London and his first visit to Spain in 1935, and the third with his return to Spain in December 1937 to join the Republican International Brigades.

Other works include A Rose for Winter, about a trip he made to Andalusia 15 years after the Civil War; Two Women (1983), a story of Lee's courtship and marriage with Kathy, daughter of Helen Garman; The Firstborn (1964), about the birth and childhood of their daughter Jessie; and I Can't Stay Long (1975), a collection of occasional writing.

Lee also wrote travel books, essays, a radio play, and short stories.

Poetry[]

Lee's original love was poetry, though he was only moderately successful as a poet. His earliest poem appeared in The Sunday Referee in 1934.[7] Another poem was published in Cyril Connolly's Horizon magazine in 1940. and his debut volume of poems, The Sun My Monument, was launched in 1944. This was followed by The Bloom of Candles (1947) and My Many-coated Man (1955). Several poems written in the early 1940s reflect the atmosphere of the war, but also capture the beauty of the English countryside. 

Recognition[]

Lee received several awards, including the Atlantic Award Template:Clarify (1944), the Society of Authors travelling award (1951), the William Foyle Poetry Prize (1956), and the W.H. Smith and Son Award (1960).

He was awarded the decoration of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1952.

In As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, Lee writes of his stay in Almuñécar, a Spanish fishing village which he calls "Castillo". In 1988 the citizens of Almuñécar erected a statue in Lee's honour.[5]

In 1993, A Moment of War was chosen as a Notable Book of the Year by the editors of the New York Times Book Review.[5]

In 2003 the British Library acquired Lee's original manuscripts, letters and diaries. The collection includes 2 unknown plays and drafts of Cider with Rosie, which reveal that early titles for the book were Cider with Poppy, Cider with Daisy and The Abandoned Shade.[8]

In popular culture[]

Lee's poem "Twelfth Night" from My Many-coated Man was set for unaccompanied mixed choir by American composer Samuel Barber in 1968.

Publications[]

Poetry[]

  • The Sun My Monument. London: Hogarth Press, 1944; London: Chatto & Windus, 1961.
  • The Bloom of Candles: Verse from a poet's year. London: J. Lehmann, 1947.
  • My Many-Coated Man. London: Andre Deutsch, 1955.
  • Poems. London: Vista Books, 1960.
  • Selected Poems. London: Andre Deutsch, 1983.

Non-fiction[]

  • Land at War. London: Ministry of Information, 1945.
  • An Obstinate Exile. London: printed by W.M. Cheney for the Friends of Fay Ellen & Lawrence Clark Powell, 1951.
  • A Rose for Winter: Travels in Andalusia. London: Hogarth Press, 1955.
  • The Firstborn. London: Hogarth Press, 1964.
  • I Can't Stay Long. London: Andre Deutsch, 1975.
  • Two Women: A book of words and pictures. London: Andre Deutsch, 1983.

Autobiographical Trilogy[]

  • Cider with Rosie. London: Hogarth Press, 1959; Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1959
    • published in the U.S. as The Edge of Day: A boyhood in the west of England. New York, Morrow, 1960.
  • As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. London: Andre Deutsch, 1969; New York: Atheneum, 1969.
  • A Moment of War: A memoir of the Spanish Civil War. London: Viking, 1991; New York: New Press, 1991.
  • Red Sky at Sunrise (combined trilogy). London: Viking / Penguin, 1992.

Juvenile[]

  • Man Must Move (with David Lambert). London: Rathbane, 1969.
    • printed in U.S. as The Wonderful World of Transportation. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969.

Collected editions[]

  • A Laurie Lee Selection (selected by Chris Buckton). Harlow, Essex, UK: Longman, 1984.


Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[9]

"April_Rise"_by_Laurie_Lee_(read_by_Tom_O'Bedlam)

"April Rise" by Laurie Lee (read by Tom O'Bedlam)

Audio / video[]

  • Laurie Lee Reads from 'Cider with Rosie'. Decca, 1962.[9]

See also[]

References[]

Notes[]

  1. ↑ Grove, Valerie (1999). Laurie Lee: The Well-Loved Stranger. New York: Viking.
  2. ↑ Valerie Grove, The Well Loved Stranger, a biography of Laurie Lee, 26
  3. ↑ Laurie Lee - The well-loved stranger, by Valerie Grove
  4. ↑ "Laurie Lee Civil War Lies Claims 'Are Ludicrous'." Highbeam Research. Originally published in The Birmingham Post, 1 January 1998.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Lyman, Rick. "Poet Laurie Lee Dies at 82." The New Straits Times, 20 May 1997.
  6. ↑ Dunnett, Roderic. "Back to Nature." The Spectator, 20 September 2003.
  7. ↑ Lee, Laurie (1969) "As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning", London: Andre Deutsch, p. 40.
  8. ↑ Malvern, Jack. "Cider with Rosie Saved for Nation." TimesOnline, 16 May 2003.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Search results = au:Laurie Lee, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Feb. 6, 2014.

External links[]

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