The Book Club: who was the poet Laurie Lee?

Best of the Spectator

The Spectator

News Commentary, News, Daily News, Society & Culture

4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2019

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sam is joined from beyond the grave on this week’s Spectator Book Club by the late Laurie Lee — to talk about Gloucestershire’s Slad Valley, the landscape that made him a writer. Acting as medium, so to speak, is David Parker — whose 1990s interviews with Lee before his death provide the material for the new book Down In The Valley: A Writer’s Landscape — and who’s here to talk about the pleasures and difficulties of coaxing reminiscences out of this laureate of English rural life. Essential listening for anyone for whom Cider With Rosie and As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning formed part of a literary education.

The Spectator Book Club, what used to be known as Spectator Books, is a series of literary interviews and discussions on the latest releases in the world of publishing, from poetry through to physics. Presented by Sam Leith, The Spectator's Literary Editor. Hear past episodes here.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Just before you start listening to this podcast, a reminder that we have a special subscription offer.
0:04.8	You can get 12 issues of The Spectator for £12, as well as a £20,000 Amazon voucher.
0:10.3	Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher if you'd like to get this offer.
0:20.5	Hello and welcome to the Spectator Books Podcast.
0:23.6	This week we're talking about Laurie Lee, the author most famously, of course, of cider with Rosie,
0:29.5	a bucolic kind of novel come memoir of his childhood in Gloucestershire.
0:35.0	And I'm not unfortunately joined by Laurie Lee because that would
0:38.1	have to be through a medium, he having died in about 1997. But I'm joined instead by David Parker,
0:44.2	who is a filmmaker who made a film or series of films with Laurie Lee shortly before he died,
0:50.0	and who's now published a book called Laurie Lee, Down in the Valley, A Writer's Landscape.
0:55.3	David, welcome. Can you tell me a bit how this book came about? Because it's, it's
1:00.0	Laurie Lee's words, but not written. That's right, actually, yeah. It's a nice story. I wanted
1:06.0	to make a film with Laurie Lee back in 1994 for ITV, and pitched the idea to the company and they left and said
1:15.7	we've tried to get Laurie Lee many times and he just won't do television so thanks but no thanks
1:20.8	and I was a bit puzzled by this and so I contacted Laurie Lee's agent at the time, a chap called Charles Walker.
1:29.6	In those days I could get him on the phone and I said, I'd like to make a film about
1:33.6	Laurie and the influence of Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds on his writing.
1:37.2	And he laughed and said, no, Lorry doesn't do television.
1:40.4	He certainly wouldn't do that.
1:42.0	But thanks for your interest.
1:45.7	But I carried on talking to Charles and I was saying to him, wouldn't it be a great tragedy if Lurie dies or when he dies and
1:51.2	nobody's had the chance to hear from the man himself about what inspired this amazing writing?
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Spectator, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Spectator and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.