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by Laurie Lee

Laurie_Lee Memoirs English
  • ISBN: 0393022331
  • Category: Biographies
  • Author: Laurie Lee
  • Subcategory: Memoirs
  • Other formats: mbr txt rtf lit
  • Language: English
  • Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc (September 1, 1985)
  • Pages: 192 pages
  • FB2 size: 1883 kb
  • EPUB size: 1791 kb
  • Rating: 4.8
  • Votes: 763
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As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) is a memoir by Laurie Lee, a British poet. It is a sequel to Cider with Rosie which detailed his life in post First World War Gloucestershire.

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) is a memoir by Laurie Lee, a British poet. The author leaves the security of his Cotswold village of Slad in Gloucestershire to start a new life, at the same time embarking on an epic journey by foot. It is 1934, and as a young man Lee walks to London from his Cotswolds home. He is to live by playing the violin and by labouring on a London building site.

Thirty years later Laurie Lee It was 1934 and a young man walked to London from the security of. .

Thirty years later Laurie Lee It was 1934 and a young man walked to London from the security of the Cotswolds to make his fortune. He was to live by playing the violin and by labouring on a London building site. Then, knowing one Spanish phrase, he decided to see Spain. Jun 21, 2011 russell barnes rated it really liked it. This is one of two books I inherited from my mum's parents, the other being Anna Karenina. Beautifully written book about Laurie Lee's experiences as a nineteen-year-old walking through Spain just before, and as, the Civil War started. As much poetry as prose.

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Tomorrow, on the centenary of Laurie Lee's birth, the singer and writer Cerys Matthews will open a waymarked trail . A century ago tomorrow saw the birth of Laurie Lee, whose most famous work, Cider with Rosie, immortalised the countryside of his youth.

Tomorrow, on the centenary of Laurie Lee's birth, the singer and writer Cerys Matthews will open a waymarked trail around his beloved Slad Valley. Already a wildlife walk, the route now sports 10 larch posts with Lee's poems inscribed on glass panels. Boyd Tonkin strolls through the Slad Valley to see what remains of its celebrated past.

In the mid-1930s, the nineteen year-old Lee sets out on foot from his Gloucestershire home, with a tin of.I loved this book and was amazed that Laurie Lee, with such an impoverished upbringing in a tiny country village, could write so brilliantly.

In the mid-1930s, the nineteen year-old Lee sets out on foot from his Gloucestershire home, with a tin of biscuits and a violin, on his way to London via a hundred mile detour to coast "as I'd never yet seen the se. Two years later he is fortuitously "rescued" off the coast of southern Spain by the Royal Navy trawling the Spanish beaches for stray Brits marooned between the warring factions of the Spanish Civil Wa.

com/reading 2/as i walked out 1. Retrieved 2007-05-22. Books and Writers: Laurie Lee (1914-1997)". Laurie Lee - Infobox Writer name Laurie Lee caption birthdate June 26, 1914 birthplace Stroud, Gloucestershire, England deathdate May 13, 1997 (aged 82) deathplace Slad, Gloucestershire, England occupation Author, screenwriter, poetLaurenc.

The second volume in Laurie Lee’s acclaimed autobiographical trilogy, an unforgettable glimpse of Spain on the eve of its civil war. On a bright Sunday morning in June 1934, Laurie Lee left the village home so lovingly portrayed in his bestselling memoir, Cider with Rosie

The second volume in Laurie Lee’s acclaimed autobiographical trilogy, an unforgettable glimpse of Spain on the eve of its civil war. On a bright Sunday morning in June 1934, Laurie Lee left the village home so lovingly portrayed in his bestselling memoir, Cider with Rosie. His plan was to walk the hundred miles from Slad to London, with a detour of an extra hundred miles to see the sea for the first time. He was nineteen years old and brought with him only what he could carry on his back: a tent, a change of clothes, his violin, a tin of biscuits, and some cheese

Born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, in 1914, he was educated at Slad village school and Stroud Central School

Born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, in 1914, he was educated at Slad village school and Stroud Central School. At the age of nineteen he walked to London and then travelled on foot through Spain, where he was trapped by the outbreak of the Civil War. He later returned by crossing the Pyrenees, as he recounted in A Moment of War. Laurie Lee published four collections of poems: The Sun My Monument (1944), The Bloom of Candles (1947), My Many-Coated Man (1955) and Pocket Poems (1960).

Autobiographical account of the young poet's journey to Spain on the eve of its civil war
Reviews about As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (7):
TheMoonix
Written in bursts of poetic description, this book is a fast, enjoyable yet somewhat disturbing read. I am traveling to Spain next month to busk on the streets with my kids and husband so the descriptions of Spain and especially of his experience busking on the streets there intrigued me. The author's observations seem insightful and believable, but I never grew to trust in the honor of his character when it came to women. For me, his almost nightly drunkeness, his staring at the breasts of the daughter of his host for one night, his describing young girls as "sexily confident", his visit to the brothel, his lusting after women, his describing so many things in the natural world as voluptuous,and his inaction when a mother told him the man before him had just committed incest on his own daughter made me feel uneasy about his attitudes of women. He also describes a quite seedy side of Spain. That being said, I enjoyed his sense of adventure and found his writing style potent, succinct and very poetic. Some of his lines are among the best that I've read. Very mixed, but ultimately I would recommend the book if you can deal with the downsides I mentioned. The last chapter and a half about the start of the Spanish Civil War were absolute page-turners.
Qucid
I've read a lot of travel books about people like Lee, who set off on their own to "see the world". What piqued my interest in this particular diary, however, was it's connection to the beginning, at least, of the Spanish Civil War. I grew up in the 30''s, and well remember this precursor to WW II, and the fateful & terrible events to follow. It also provides many stark descriptions, which I think most of us have either forgot... or never been aware of...the conditions of extreme poverty that existed in pre-WW II Europe, and are still extant in the third world. A more than worth-while read..
Lestony
I loved this book and was amazed that Laurie Lee, with such an impoverished upbringing in a tiny country village, could write so brilliantly. I greatly admired his gumption in setting off on foot and on his own with almost no money, almost no clothes and just an old violin for company. That he managed to survive in London - always an expensive place - and then get himself from one end of Spain to the other by busking is astonishing.

Laurie Lee comes across as a highly intelligent person, in spite of having little in the way of formal education, but also an extremely empathetic and likeable person. I wish I could have met him - I'm sure it would have been wonderful!
Lamranilv
This has got to be one of the most evocative memoirs ever written; it certainly tops all the other road-trip/travelers tales I've read. As befits an award winning poet, Lee's prose has a concise, 3-D image making eloquence that drops the reader into the center of a scene, in the breathing presence of a character, or into the tactile truth of a landscape.

In the mid-1930s, the nineteen year-old Lee sets out on foot from his Gloucestershire home, with a tin of biscuits and a violin, on his way to London via a hundred mile detour to coast "as I'd never yet seen the sea." Two years later he is fortuitously "rescued" off the coast of southern Spain by the Royal Navy trawling the Spanish beaches for stray Brits marooned between the warring factions of the Spanish Civil War. Lee's narrative of what happens in between these events provides priceless images of life as experienced by a penniless wanderer in depression-era Britain and pre-modern Spain.

Few histories of an era or place can conjure its emotional and physical resonance quite so well as a living memory. In his description of life on the road to London, Lee is able to capture the essence of the failure of capitalism during the Thirties (our current failure being but an echo of it's father).

Spoiler Alert...quotations from the book:

Lee finds himself among the "host of unemployed who wandered aimlessly about England at that time...They were like a broken army walking away from war, cheeks sunken, eyes dead with fatigue. Some carried bags of tools or broken cardboard suitcases; some wore the ghosts of city suits...walking up and down the country in a maze of jobless refusals.." Among them are professional tramps, like Alf, who taught him the ways of the road. "He wore a deerstalker hat, so sodden and shredded it looked like a helping of breakfast food...a tramp to his bones, always wrapping and unwrapping himself, and picking over his bits and pieces...never passing a bit of grass that looked good for a shakedown nor a cottage that seemed ripe for charity."

Soon after he parts from Alf on the outskirts of Ascot, the other half of society rolls into view: "I wasn't surprised when one of the Daimlers pulled up and an arm beckoned me from the window..."Want a pheasant my man?" asked a voice from inside. "We just knocked over a beauty a hundred yards back." A quarter of an hour later I arrived at Ascot. It was race week...little grooms and jockeys dodging among the long glossy legs of thoroughbreds; and the pedigree owners dipping their long cool necks into baskets of pate and gull's eggs...Alf and the tattered lines of the workless were far away in another country..."

Plus ça change, eh?
Enila
It is a fact that there is a whole legion of walkers in the world and always has been. There perhaps are many like Laurie Lee and Paul Theroux who have walked to other lands but few of those have the gift of observation that sees things as they are and can write their opinion about it. Lee wrote in the last century- Theroux decades ago. In their reading it is clear they both truly liked about their adventures, the things they saw, and the people they met.
Lee in his description of those two was most informative and entertaining; a gift to the 19year old novice walker that he was. The physical strength and endurance dictated by his route as well as his cleverness in finding the means to fit in and survive with the peasants of the many parts of Spain in the late 1930’s as he traveled, is what amazed me. It is well worth the read; a fine well written adventure.

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