Laurie Lee
Laurie Lee
Laurence Edward Alan "Laurie" Lee, MBEwas an English poet, novelist and screenwriter, who was brought up in the village of Slad and went to the Central Boys' School, Stroud, Gloucestershire. His most famous work was an autobiographical trilogy which consisted of Cider with Rosie, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morningand A Moment of War. 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...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth26 June 1914
I was last among the long grass and I'd never seen long grass and never been on my own and out of sight of humans before.
What she did was to open our eyes to details of country life such as teaching us names of wild flowers and getting us to draw and paint and learn poetry.
Such a morning it is when love leans through geranium windows and calls with a cockerel's tongue. When red-haired girls scamper like roses over the rain-green grass, and the sun drips honey.
In London, Man is the most secret animal on earth.
All civilizations at some time have fallen into this total terror, when the mystery of life was a kind of panic only to be assuaged by the spilling of blood.
I wanted to communicate what I had seen, so that others could see it.
It was a world that I wanted to record because it was such a miracle visitation to me.
Effie M. was a monster. Six foot high and as strong as a farm horse.No sooner had she decided that she wanted UncleTom than she knocked him off his bicycle and told him.
We were living in the Slad Road when my father left us. I was about three.
I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began.
In America, even your menus have the gift of language.... The Chef's own Vienna Roast. A hearty, rich meat loaf, gently seasoned to perfection and served in a creamy nest of mashed farm potatoes and strictly fresh garden vegetables. Of course, what you get is cole slaw and a slab of meat, but that doesn't matter because the menu has already started your juices going. Oh, those menus. In America, they are poetry.
The prospect Smiler was a manic farmer. Few men I think can have been as unfortunate as he; for on the one hand he was a melancholic with a loathing for mankind, on the other, some paralysis had twisted his mouth into a permanent and radiant smile. So everyone he met, being warmed by his smile, would shout him a happy greeting. And beaming upon them with his sunny face he would curse them all to hell.
But our waking life, and our growing years, were for the most part spent in the kitchen, and until we married, or ran away, it was the common room we shared.
The Welsh are not like any other people in Britain, and they know how separate they are. They are the Celts, the tough little wine-dark race who were the original possessors of the island, who never mixed with the invaders coming later from the east, but were slowly driven into the western mountains.