The Life and Loves of Laurie Lee

The Life and Loves of Laurie Lee PDF Author: Valerie Grove
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
ISBN: 1849547688
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Millions of readers know and love him for his lyrical portraits of his life, from the moving and nostalgic tales of childhood and innocence found in the pages of Cider with Rosie, to the nomadic wanderings through Spain retold in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, to his dramatic experiences fighting Franco's forces in A Moment of War. As a poet, playwright, broadcaster and writer, Laurie Lee created a legend around himself that would see him safely secured in the literary canon even within his own lifetime. Yet, though he wrote exclusively about his own life, Lee never told the whole story. His readers know him as a man devoted to two women: his wife and his daughter, 'the firstborn'. Among the pages of his published works there is little trace of the girls he left behind. He never identifi ed in print the girl who inspired him to go to Spain, or the woman who supported him there. He never named the beautiful mistress he came home to, who was the great love of his young life and who led him into literary London, bore his child and broke his heart. In The Life and Loves of Laurie Lee, acclaimed biographer Valerie Grove delves into the letters and diaries he kept hidden from the world, building on her magisterial study of the charismatic poet to capture the essence of this romantic, elusive enigma and bring him to life once more.

The Life and Loves of Laurie Lee

The Life and Loves of Laurie Lee PDF Author: Valerie Grove
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
ISBN: 1849547688
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 382

Get Book Here

Book Description
Millions of readers know and love him for his lyrical portraits of his life, from the moving and nostalgic tales of childhood and innocence found in the pages of Cider with Rosie, to the nomadic wanderings through Spain retold in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, to his dramatic experiences fighting Franco's forces in A Moment of War. As a poet, playwright, broadcaster and writer, Laurie Lee created a legend around himself that would see him safely secured in the literary canon even within his own lifetime. Yet, though he wrote exclusively about his own life, Lee never told the whole story. His readers know him as a man devoted to two women: his wife and his daughter, 'the firstborn'. Among the pages of his published works there is little trace of the girls he left behind. He never identifi ed in print the girl who inspired him to go to Spain, or the woman who supported him there. He never named the beautiful mistress he came home to, who was the great love of his young life and who led him into literary London, bore his child and broke his heart. In The Life and Loves of Laurie Lee, acclaimed biographer Valerie Grove delves into the letters and diaries he kept hidden from the world, building on her magisterial study of the charismatic poet to capture the essence of this romantic, elusive enigma and bring him to life once more.

Laurie Lee

Laurie Lee PDF Author: Valerie Grove
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 612

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Book Description
Despite his autobigraphical writings, despite his gregarious appearances on the London literary scene and in the village pub where he was always available to fans, Laurie Lee was a secretive man.

I Can't Stay Long

I Can't Stay Long PDF Author: Laurie Lee
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1497641381
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
The essential Laurie Lee, a collection of occasional writings full of his unique vision and irresistible charm All of the wit and wisdom and poetry that made Laurie Lee one of the most celebrated English writers of the twentieth century can be found in this compilation of “first loves and obsessions.” In Part One, Lee revisits his idyllic boyhood in the Cotswolds village made famous by his bestselling autobiography, Cider with Rosie. In Part Two, he turns his attention to an earnest consideration of abstract concepts such as the power of charm, the pleasures of appetite, and the meaning of paradise. And in the final and longest section, the author of the acclaimed Spanish travelogues As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and A Rose for Winter tells the stories of his many other journeys—from sun-dappled Tuscany to melancholy Warsaw to the enchanting and exotic Sugar Islands of the Caribbean.

Cider with Rosie

Cider with Rosie PDF Author: Laurie Lee
Publisher: Chatto & Windus
ISBN: 9780701168629
Category : Authors, English
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
At all times wonderfully evocative and poignant, Cider With Rosie is a charming memoir of Laurie Lee's childhood in a remote Cotswold village, a world that is tangibly real and yet reminiscent of a now distant past. In this idyllic pastoral setting, unencumbered by the callous father who so quickly abandoned his family responsibilities, Laurie's adoring mother becomes the centre of his world as she struggles to raise a growing family against the backdrop of the Great War. The sophisticated adult author's retrospective commentary on events is endearingly juxtaposed with that of the innocent, spotty youth, permanently prone to tears and self-absorption. Rosie's identity from the novel Cider with Rosie was kept secret for 25 years. She was Rose Buckland, Lee's cousin by marriage. "From the Paperback edition."

A Moment of War

A Moment of War PDF Author: Laurie Lee
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 149764139X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 105

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Book Description
A memoir of the Spanish Civil War with “the plainness of Orwell but the metaphorical soaring of a poem . . . An extraordinary book” (The New York Times Book Review). In December 1937 I crossed the Pyrenees from France—two days on foot through the snow. I don’t know why I chose December; it was just one of a number of idiocies I committed at the time. Such was Laurie Lee’s entry into the Spanish Civil War. Six months after the Nationalist uprising forced him to leave the country he had grown to love, he returned to offer his life for the Republican cause. It seemed as simple as knocking on a farmhouse door in the middle of the night and declaring himself ready to fight. It would not be the last time he was almost executed for being a spy. In that bitter winter in a divided Spain, Lee’s youthful idealism came face to face with the reality of war. The International Brigade he sought to join was not a gallant fighting force, but a collection of misfits without proper leadership or purpose. Boredom and bad food and false alarms were as much a part of the experience of war as actual battle. And when the decisive moment finally came—the moment of him or the enemy—it left Lee feeling the very opposite of heroic. The final volume in Laurie Lee’s acclaimed autobiographical trilogy—preceded by Cider with Rosie and As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning—is a clear-eyed and vital snapshot of a young man, and a proud nation, at a historic crossroads.

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning PDF Author: Laurie Lee
Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher
ISBN: 1567923925
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
"I was nineteen years old, still soft at the edges, but with a confident belief in good fortune. I carried a small rolled-up tent, a violin in a blanket, a change of clothes, a tin of treacle biscuits, and some cheese. I was excited, vain-glorious, knowing I had far to go; but not, as yet, how far." Despite this romantic and optimistic opening, what Lee finds is the most primitive and feudal country in Europe, a peninsula untouched by the modern world, a land of labor without dignity, a church devoid of compassion, and a country ripe for revolutionary change.

Village Christmas

Village Christmas PDF Author: Laurie Lee
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241243688
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
From the author of Cider With Rosie, Village Christmas is a moving, lyrical portrait of England through the changing years and seasons. Laurie Lee left his childhood home in the Cotswolds when he was nineteen, but it remained with him throughout his life until, many years later, he returned for good. This collection brings to life the sights, sounds, landscapes and traditions of his home - from centuries-old May Day rituals to his own patch of garden, from carol singing in crunching snow to pub conversations and songs. Here too he writes about the mysteries of love, living in wartime Chelsea, Winston Churchill's wintry funeral and his battle, in old age, to save his beloved Slad Valley from developers. Told with a warm sense of humour and a powerful sense of history, Village Christmas brings us a picture of a vanished world.

The Firstborn

The Firstborn PDF Author: Laurie Lee
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1497641365
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 23

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Book Description
An intimate and lyrical consideration of what it means to be a father This moment of meeting seemed to be a birth-time for both of us; her first and my second life. Nothing, I knew, would be the same again . . . Full of warmth and candor, this essay composed on the occasion of his daughter’s birth is one of Laurie Lee’s most delightful and inspiring works. From the moment Jessy is born, “purple and dented like a bruised plum,” to the first time his kiss quiets her cries, Lee describes the joys and responsibilities of new fatherhood with a poet’s precision and boundless capacity for wonder.

Laurie Lee Selected Poems

Laurie Lee Selected Poems PDF Author: Laurie Lee
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited
ISBN: 1910065277
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 81

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Book Description
Lee's first love was always poetry, though he was only moderately successful as a poet. Lee's first poem appeared in The Sunday Referee in 1934. Another poem was published in Cyril Connolly’s Horizon magazine in 1940 and his first 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. The poem “Twelfth Night” from My Many-coated Man was set for unaccompanied mixed choir by American composer Samuel Barber in 1968.

Surfacing

Surfacing PDF Author: Kathleen Jamie
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 052550625X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
“[Kathleen Jamie’s] essays guide you softly along coastlines of varying continents, exploring caves, and pondering ice ages until the narrator stumbles over — not a rock on the trail, but mortality, maybe the earth’s, maybe our own, pointing to new paths forward through the forest.” —Delia Owens, author of Where the Crawdads Sing, “By the Book” in The New York Times Book Review. An immersive exploration of time and place in a shrinking world, from the award-winning author of Sightlines. In this remarkable blend of memoir, cultural history, and travelogue, poet and author Kathleen Jamie touches points on a timeline spanning millennia, and considers what surfaces and what reconnects us to our past. From the thawing tundra linking a Yup'ik village in Alaska to its hunter-gatherer past to the shifting sand dunes revealing the impressiely preserved homes of neolithic farmers in Scotland, Jamie explores how the changing natural world can alter our sense of time. Most movingly, she considers, as her father dies and her children leave home, the surfacing of an older, less tethered sense of herself. In precise, luminous prose, Surfacing offers a profound sense of time passing and an antidote to all that is instant, ephemeral, unrooted.