'As a writer he was the disengaged onlooker who understood how his presence altered a place or a situation.' This is how The Independent described Laurie Lee in their 1997 obituary of the much-loved author. In A Thousand Laurie Lees, another poet, Adam Horovitz, explores not only how the Slad Valley informed the man and his writing but also how the valley itself was affected by its association with such an international figure; and how it has retained its particular identity since its description in Cider with Rosie. Shortly after Laurie Lee's death in 1997, a handful of locals dressed up as Lee and cycled right through the heart of Cider with Rosie country, stopping off at all the pubs on the way. They called their journey 'The Night of a thousand Laurie Lees'. Slad valley man Horovitz draws on memoir, myth and literature inspired by the valley and his walks through the Slad landscape, charting what has changed and what remains, from badger setts to 'Notting Hill in Wellies,' to celebrate the man and the landscape that made him.
Zusammenfassung
This is not a book about Laurie Lee, still less a biography. It is about the spirit of the man and the spirit of a place. A Thousand Laurie Lees is a poetic reassessment of the Slad Valley, a memoir from a different age rooted in the same idyllic landscape that inspired Cider with Rosie. A year after Lee's death in 1997, a handful of locals dressed up as him for an epic, drunken cycle ride right through the heart of Laurie Lee country. They called it The Night of a Thousand Laurie Lees and stopped off at all the pubs on the way, signing books, singing and carousing. Taking this as a starting point, poet Adam Horovitz reaches back through myth, memory and literature to explore Laurie Lee's impact on the Slad Valley and its people. Lyrically evoking his own childhood there sixty years after Lee, he explores the connections between family, the valley and learning to write, and examines what has changed since Lee's day and what remains the same.