Down in the Valley: A Writer’s Landscape

£12.95

Out of Print
Down in the Valley: A Writer’s Landscape Author: Format: Hardback First Published: Published By: Penguin Books Ltd
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Pages: 112 Language: English ISBN: 9780241411674 Categories: ,

‘Living in our valley was like broad beans in a pod, so snug and enclosed and protective.’ 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. In this never before published collection, Laurie Lee guides us through his home landscape around Slad in Gloucestershire, and the memories of his youth there. Down in the Valley bring to life the sights, sounds and traditions of his home – from his favourite pub, The Woolpack, summer bathing and winter skating on the village pond, the church through the seasons, learning the violin and playing jazz records in the privy on a wind-up gramophone. Told with a warm sense of humour and a powerful sense of history, Down in the Valley brings us a picture of a vanished world.

Weight0.203 kg
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Age is taking Lee's eyesight but polishing up the anecdotes and deepening his characteristic note of wistfulness for a lost age ... It is a fine thing to revisit this writer's landscape and hear his amiable voice in it again. -- Michael Caines * Times Literary Supplement * Down in the Valley is truly evocative of time and place. A beautiful illustration of how, in some way, we are all indelibly influenced by the landscape of our childhood. -- Raynor Winn, author of The Salt Path Age is taking Lee's eyesight but polishing up the anecdotes and deepening his characteristic note of wistfulness for a lost age ... It is a fine thing to revisit this writer's landscape and hear his amiable voice in it again. -- Michael Caines * Times Literary Supplement *

Author Biography

Laurie Lee has written some of the best-loved travel books in the English language. 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). His other works include The Voyage of Magellan (1948), The Firstborn (1964), I Can't Stay Long (1975), and Two Women (1983). He also wrote three bestselling volumes of autobiography: Cider with Rosie (1959), which has sold over six million copies worldwide, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) and A Moment of War (1991).