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Laurie Lee: The well-loved stranger
. with dustjacket, 1999, bright clean copy, Professional booksellers since 1981
1000 pages, Hardcover
First published October 28, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 29, 2017
I know I’m going contrary to popular opinion here, but I found this a dry old read. Perhaps my unusual circumstances influenced this, in that I read two of Lee’s books (Midsummer and Rosie) and followed it quickly with Grove’s biography. I then took part in a cruise of Spain called In The Footsteps Of Laurie Lee, with Grove on board and lecturing.
Much of the book to me, is a paraphrase of Lee’s work. After reading Midsummer, I then found myself repeatedly reading exactly the same words and phrases of Lee in this biography. Grove found herself in a unique position - her agent put her in touch with Lee, they had one phone call and he agreed in principle to a deal for her to write the biography. She didn’t hear from him again and he died some months after. Lee’s wife gave Grove unfettered access to his (always locked, even to his family) office and she began the travel through his private letters and documents.
In short, and in my opinion, Lee was a cad to numerous women, carefully managed his own reputation, was a sponger and greatly misrepresented many of his experiences. In each of his three ‘autobiographical’ books, he wrote them between 30 and 40 years after the period he’s covering. The result is an awful lot of fanciful occurrences that are unlikely ever to have happened. I guess when I read Grove’s book, I’d already taken a disliking to this great British treasure, Laurie Lee. On meeting Grove, I found her dispassionate about Laurie Lee - she just happened to have picked up her agent’s suggestion with Lee and got lucky with his death and access to his office.
Much of the book to me, is a paraphrase of Lee’s work. After reading Midsummer, I then found myself repeatedly reading exactly the same words and phrases of Lee in this biography. Grove found herself in a unique position - her agent put her in touch with Lee, they had one phone call and he agreed in principle to a deal for her to write the biography. She didn’t hear from him again and he died some months after. Lee’s wife gave Grove unfettered access to his (always locked, even to his family) office and she began the travel through his private letters and documents.
In short, and in my opinion, Lee was a cad to numerous women, carefully managed his own reputation, was a sponger and greatly misrepresented many of his experiences. In each of his three ‘autobiographical’ books, he wrote them between 30 and 40 years after the period he’s covering. The result is an awful lot of fanciful occurrences that are unlikely ever to have happened. I guess when I read Grove’s book, I’d already taken a disliking to this great British treasure, Laurie Lee. On meeting Grove, I found her dispassionate about Laurie Lee - she just happened to have picked up her agent’s suggestion with Lee and got lucky with his death and access to his office.
May 1, 2015
A fascinating and painstakingly researched account of the life of poet and writer Laurie Lee. Born in 1914 in the rural Slad Valley in Gloucestershire (immortalised in his most famous work, Cider with Rosie) Laurie Lee’s life, as described by Valerie Grove, is as complex as it is contradictory. Growing up in relative rural poverty, he eventually became a household name, dining with royalty and comfortable in his flat, pub and club in Chelsea. The book is full of details and anecdotes about this much loved poet such as the fact that his first job was as an errand boy with a firm of Chartered Accountants in Stroud. It is difficult to think of a more unlikely career choice for someone like Laurie Lee. Thankfully, for him and his readers, this employment proved short lived and he was soon 'walking out one midsummer morning' with his violin on route to London.
Gregarious in public; he often longed for privacy and solitude. As an epileptic and often tortured with various forms of illness, he was exempted all military service in the Second World War but went onto live into eighties dying in 1997 weeks after he had celebrated Tony Blair’s victory in that year’s election.
One constant theme is the real struggle he found it to write and this from a man whose books sold in millions. Another theme is his dependence on women throughout his life- including his loving Mother, a tortured relationship with a married mistress and his supremely tolerant wife. Laurie Lee was ultimately a private person and this book, published after his death, seeks to answer a number of questions unanswered in his life. His short spell in the Spanish civil war had a disproportionate influence on his life, even if he played the violin in Spain more than he handled a gun. Lee’s life in many ways mirrors the remarkable changes of the twentieth century. Born into a valley still dominated by the horse, he ended his days having flown on Concord and when old age crept up on him he ordered ale from the pub garden with a mobile phone. The influence of nature and creation on Lee is another theme explored. He charted the moon's course, recorded the times of sunsets, marked where the sun fell in his flat at the equinoxes and followed the seasons from his beloved Slad.
He travelled extensively during his life and later wrote pieces as a travel writer in places as diverse as Hong Kong and Lebanon. One remarkable fact about his life is that his second daughter and first granddaughter were born on the same day, in the same year, weighing the same weight. When he died, photographs taken around the same time by residents showed two rainbows in the Slad Valley. A remarkable and inspiring end to a remarkable and inspiring life.
Gregarious in public; he often longed for privacy and solitude. As an epileptic and often tortured with various forms of illness, he was exempted all military service in the Second World War but went onto live into eighties dying in 1997 weeks after he had celebrated Tony Blair’s victory in that year’s election.
One constant theme is the real struggle he found it to write and this from a man whose books sold in millions. Another theme is his dependence on women throughout his life- including his loving Mother, a tortured relationship with a married mistress and his supremely tolerant wife. Laurie Lee was ultimately a private person and this book, published after his death, seeks to answer a number of questions unanswered in his life. His short spell in the Spanish civil war had a disproportionate influence on his life, even if he played the violin in Spain more than he handled a gun. Lee’s life in many ways mirrors the remarkable changes of the twentieth century. Born into a valley still dominated by the horse, he ended his days having flown on Concord and when old age crept up on him he ordered ale from the pub garden with a mobile phone. The influence of nature and creation on Lee is another theme explored. He charted the moon's course, recorded the times of sunsets, marked where the sun fell in his flat at the equinoxes and followed the seasons from his beloved Slad.
He travelled extensively during his life and later wrote pieces as a travel writer in places as diverse as Hong Kong and Lebanon. One remarkable fact about his life is that his second daughter and first granddaughter were born on the same day, in the same year, weighing the same weight. When he died, photographs taken around the same time by residents showed two rainbows in the Slad Valley. A remarkable and inspiring end to a remarkable and inspiring life.
July 2, 2012
What a life! What a man.
May 7, 2018
This biography was a revelation for me. Like many people I had an impression of Lee as a country boy who lived out most of his life within the confines of the Cotswolds. In reality, after he returned from his first sojourn in Spain, he lived most of his adult life in and around Chelsea in the West End of London. He lived a charmed life and hobnobbed with the great and the good throughout most of his adult life. The book is filled with wonderful cameos. As a fan of classical guitar music myself I loved the occasion when he took his friend Julian Bream to one of his old haunts in spain and watched with delight as the local flamenco musicians' jaws hit the floor in disbelief at the virtuosity of this nondescript young Englishman!
Lee was a man of contradictions - hedonist, voluptuary, drunkard, philanderer, egotist - he loved to be the centre of attention; but he was also capable of great warmth and immense charm. He was well aware of the importance of charm for a pennyless country boy trying to make his way in the world. He believed that a person blessed with the gift of charm had no need of good looks, wealth or talent in order to make their way in the world. Children loved his party tricks, amateur conjuring and 'court jester' antics.
Women were drawn to him like moths to a flame. The combined effects of charm, boyish good looks and a poet's soul were irresistable. For all his womanising, though, the one woman he really wanted (the beautiful, married socialite Lorna Garman Wishart) broke his heart when she left him to embark on an affair with the young Lucien Freud. It was Lorna who encouraged him to court her niece, Kathy Polge. Starting the courtship when she was barely in her mid teens, he married her when she was eighteen and he was thirty six. The marriage certificate was barely dry when he embarked on a passionate affair with the eighteen year old Antonia Dugdale, daughter of another wealthy couple who had welcomed him into the bosom of their family (although it does seem that it was antonia who instigated this relationship). Lee was a serial philanderer throughout the course of the marriage. He related how he would sometimes come home after a night on the tiles to find some anonymous girl curled up in his bed.
For some reason the literary elite have always been a bit sniffy about Lee's achievements. Perhaps it is the critics' resistance to commercial success, the argument that any work that is popular with the general public can have no artistic merit. Or perhaps it is Lee's genuine working class heritage and his red-blooded lust for life which contrasts too sharply with the ideal of artist as pallid aesthete. In his review of Groves' biography the critic Robert McCrum refers to Lee's 'artistic failure'. He suggests that Lee was some kind of a 'one trick pony' who peaked too soon with Cider with Rosie and who produced no other work of similar merit. Although Lee was never quite in the top drawer as a poet, nevertheless he had published three well-respected volumes of poetry by 1955 (five years before the publication of Cider with Rosie) and his journal of his return to Spain in the early 50s, A Rose for Winter - published in 1955, is an acknowledged classic of the travel-writing genre. The second part of his autobiography, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, published in 1969, became a classic of English literature on a par with Cider with Rosie. As well as a number of lesser books and publications he wrote many superb, evocative essays and reminiscences throughout his career, a collection of which were published recently as Village Christmas. So, two classics of English literature, a classic of travel-literature, three volumes of poetry and numerous superb short pieces and essays - if that is failure then I would like to fail like Laurie Lee.
Sadly, having loved Lee's work since first reading Cider with Rosie many decades ago, he emerges from Groves' bio as a deeply flawed individual and I could not warm to him as a human being. As an example, I have always had severe reservations about people who dislike dogs. in the course of an interview conducted in a pub, at some point he noticed a dog with its owner. Lee expressed his dislike of dogs and opined that dog-lovers are people incapable of loving other human beings. We should take no lectures on the subject of love from Laurie, whose idea of love was to befriend a variety of successful well-to-do couples, enjoy their hospitality and then embark on passionate affairs with the invariably glamorous wives., As if this were not enough, he would frequently seduce their daughters (often barely into their teens) into the bargain. Throughout much of his adult life he received a great deal of financial and moral support from his mentor Wilma Gregory, and yet he never publicly acknowledged how crucial this support was to the continuance of his career even when he had opportunities to do so.
In A Rose for Winter, his journal of his return to Spain in the early 50s, he describes in great detail his impressions as he wandered, evidently alone, around the old town, and his escapades in various bars with groups of drunken revellers, so I was somewhat puzzled by his occasional reference to 'we' did this or that. It is not until well into the book, when he describes how a local character in a bar sang love songs to 'Kati', that you realise his newlywed bride Kathy had accompanied him on the journey! Sadly I lost what little remaining respect I had for him on reading his description of a bullfight. His obvious relish for this barbaric pursuit frankly sickened me, and his contempt for the 'excruciating cowardice' displayed by some of the bulls beggars belief.
The third part of his autobiography 'A Moment of War' recalls his return to Spain in 1937 to support the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. There has always been an element of mystery surrounding the extent to which he was directly involved in any of the fighting, and many felt that the fact he waited for over fifty years to publish this third volume, long after most of the participants were dead, was a deliberate ploy to evade any awkward questions about the veracity of his account! Although there can be no doubt with regard to his sincerity in wishing to support the resistance against Franco, most of the few remaining members of the Republican Brigades seemed to be consistent in the view that Lee had little, if any, involvement in the actual fighting (if nothing else, his recurring bouts of epilepsy would have rendered him unsuitable for service on the front line). I have to say I found this by far the weakest link in the trilogy, being a series of vague and sketchy recollections of the events that (he claims) took place.
Having said all that, I am a strong believer in the need to 'separate the man from the art'. However we may view the character that emerges from Groves' superbly-written biography, Lee's wonderful prose/poems will be read and loved long after his critics are dead and forgotten.
Lee was a man of contradictions - hedonist, voluptuary, drunkard, philanderer, egotist - he loved to be the centre of attention; but he was also capable of great warmth and immense charm. He was well aware of the importance of charm for a pennyless country boy trying to make his way in the world. He believed that a person blessed with the gift of charm had no need of good looks, wealth or talent in order to make their way in the world. Children loved his party tricks, amateur conjuring and 'court jester' antics.
Women were drawn to him like moths to a flame. The combined effects of charm, boyish good looks and a poet's soul were irresistable. For all his womanising, though, the one woman he really wanted (the beautiful, married socialite Lorna Garman Wishart) broke his heart when she left him to embark on an affair with the young Lucien Freud. It was Lorna who encouraged him to court her niece, Kathy Polge. Starting the courtship when she was barely in her mid teens, he married her when she was eighteen and he was thirty six. The marriage certificate was barely dry when he embarked on a passionate affair with the eighteen year old Antonia Dugdale, daughter of another wealthy couple who had welcomed him into the bosom of their family (although it does seem that it was antonia who instigated this relationship). Lee was a serial philanderer throughout the course of the marriage. He related how he would sometimes come home after a night on the tiles to find some anonymous girl curled up in his bed.
For some reason the literary elite have always been a bit sniffy about Lee's achievements. Perhaps it is the critics' resistance to commercial success, the argument that any work that is popular with the general public can have no artistic merit. Or perhaps it is Lee's genuine working class heritage and his red-blooded lust for life which contrasts too sharply with the ideal of artist as pallid aesthete. In his review of Groves' biography the critic Robert McCrum refers to Lee's 'artistic failure'. He suggests that Lee was some kind of a 'one trick pony' who peaked too soon with Cider with Rosie and who produced no other work of similar merit. Although Lee was never quite in the top drawer as a poet, nevertheless he had published three well-respected volumes of poetry by 1955 (five years before the publication of Cider with Rosie) and his journal of his return to Spain in the early 50s, A Rose for Winter - published in 1955, is an acknowledged classic of the travel-writing genre. The second part of his autobiography, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, published in 1969, became a classic of English literature on a par with Cider with Rosie. As well as a number of lesser books and publications he wrote many superb, evocative essays and reminiscences throughout his career, a collection of which were published recently as Village Christmas. So, two classics of English literature, a classic of travel-literature, three volumes of poetry and numerous superb short pieces and essays - if that is failure then I would like to fail like Laurie Lee.
Sadly, having loved Lee's work since first reading Cider with Rosie many decades ago, he emerges from Groves' bio as a deeply flawed individual and I could not warm to him as a human being. As an example, I have always had severe reservations about people who dislike dogs. in the course of an interview conducted in a pub, at some point he noticed a dog with its owner. Lee expressed his dislike of dogs and opined that dog-lovers are people incapable of loving other human beings. We should take no lectures on the subject of love from Laurie, whose idea of love was to befriend a variety of successful well-to-do couples, enjoy their hospitality and then embark on passionate affairs with the invariably glamorous wives., As if this were not enough, he would frequently seduce their daughters (often barely into their teens) into the bargain. Throughout much of his adult life he received a great deal of financial and moral support from his mentor Wilma Gregory, and yet he never publicly acknowledged how crucial this support was to the continuance of his career even when he had opportunities to do so.
In A Rose for Winter, his journal of his return to Spain in the early 50s, he describes in great detail his impressions as he wandered, evidently alone, around the old town, and his escapades in various bars with groups of drunken revellers, so I was somewhat puzzled by his occasional reference to 'we' did this or that. It is not until well into the book, when he describes how a local character in a bar sang love songs to 'Kati', that you realise his newlywed bride Kathy had accompanied him on the journey! Sadly I lost what little remaining respect I had for him on reading his description of a bullfight. His obvious relish for this barbaric pursuit frankly sickened me, and his contempt for the 'excruciating cowardice' displayed by some of the bulls beggars belief.
The third part of his autobiography 'A Moment of War' recalls his return to Spain in 1937 to support the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. There has always been an element of mystery surrounding the extent to which he was directly involved in any of the fighting, and many felt that the fact he waited for over fifty years to publish this third volume, long after most of the participants were dead, was a deliberate ploy to evade any awkward questions about the veracity of his account! Although there can be no doubt with regard to his sincerity in wishing to support the resistance against Franco, most of the few remaining members of the Republican Brigades seemed to be consistent in the view that Lee had little, if any, involvement in the actual fighting (if nothing else, his recurring bouts of epilepsy would have rendered him unsuitable for service on the front line). I have to say I found this by far the weakest link in the trilogy, being a series of vague and sketchy recollections of the events that (he claims) took place.
Having said all that, I am a strong believer in the need to 'separate the man from the art'. However we may view the character that emerges from Groves' superbly-written biography, Lee's wonderful prose/poems will be read and loved long after his critics are dead and forgotten.
November 23, 2019
Quite literally, a page turner. How many biographies have that effect? Despite owning the book for nearly twenty years, it was hearing David Parker talking about his filming of Laurie Lee in the late 1980s that made me go to the book and start reading...
August 9, 2022
Breathtaking research - I envy Grove’s work ethic but too long. At times it felt like Grove was paraphrasing all of Lee’s letters. Strangely, I think that more time was devoted to his rockpooling on holiday than the death of his mother. Still, this was an insightful account of a fascinating man.
February 15, 2023
Well-researched, comprehensive and moving biography
June 2, 2026
Good biography but too long.
October 10, 2015
A very well, pleasingly written, informative and meticulously researched book with super archival reference material that is slotted into place by the author, with the deftness of a prestidigitator. It has for me, in addition, a special resonance, as besides loving Laurie's works I knew Lorna and more importantly I knew and esteemed her husband Ernest both of whom lived a few fields away from me and he and I often together walked around his farm and woods bird watching and admiring the silence between the birdsong together. A great biography
September 24, 2018
A great insight into Lee's life and what sort of person he was. Certainly different from, what I believe, most peoples view of him is.
However, I did find the book itself heavy going in places and, on occasions, a little diary like. "on this day he did this, on this day he did that".
That said, I found the book interesting and feel it is well worth reading if you are a fan of Laurie Lee, or love any of his works.
However, I did find the book itself heavy going in places and, on occasions, a little diary like. "on this day he did this, on this day he did that".
That said, I found the book interesting and feel it is well worth reading if you are a fan of Laurie Lee, or love any of his works.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews