Centenary celebrations for Laure Lee

Celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of renowned Cotswolds poet, novelist, and screenwriter Laurie Lee are picking-up pace for the summer.

And on the actual centenary of his birth, on June 26th, a new Laurie Lee Wildlife Way will be officially launched by Cerys Matthews.

Created by the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust the new six-mile trail traces a route around the Slad Valley - the setting for Laurie Lee’s evocative novel Cider with Rosie.

The circular walk takes in four of the Trust’s nature reserves, including Laurie Lee Wood which opened last year, and includes ten new ‘poetry posts’ featuring poems by Lee inspired by the Gloucestershire landscape. The poetry trail consists of 10 larch posts, each over five feet tall.

Cerys Matthews, who has written the forward for the new edition of Cider with Rosie, will be in the Slad Valley on June 26th to launch the new trail and a self-guided walk leaflet.

A full schedule of events has been organized for 2014, in Stroud and the surrounding valleys - including music, poetry, exhibitions, walks and workshops. Laurie Lee will also be celebrated at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival and Cheltenham Literature Festival.

A good starting point to learn more about Laurie Lee is the Museum in the Park, in Stroud, which houses a permanent Laurie Lee display, including a recording of him reading from Cider with Rosie along with other images and objects which celebrate the landscapes that inspired the author and continue to thrill artists today.

The Museum will also stage a special exhibition, from September 6th to October 5th, showcasing a collection of previously unseen drawings and paintings by Laurie Lee. It includes new work by artists inspired by a series of walks through Lee’s beloved landscapes of Slad, the Stroud Valleys and beyond. The exhibition will be accompanied by poetry readings, workshops and special events.

A week-long celebration will take place in the Slad Valley from June 21st to 29th.

Events will include an art exhibition titled ‘Inspired by Slad Valley’, guided walks, cream teas and open gardens in and around Slad village, a performance of ‘Cider with Laurie’ in the former village Schoolhouse, a centenary cricket match and a cider festival and flamenco evening at the Woolpack pub.

Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust will be leading a celebration walk on June 8th, and other walks will take place throughout the summer.

For further details, visit www.museuminthepark.org.uk/laurie-lee-centenary-celebrations.

For further details about Laurie Lee, visit the official website www. laurielee.org/.

Best-known for his best-selling book Cider with Rosie (which was published in America with the title Edge of Day), Lee first came to live in the tiny Cotswolds village of Slad, two miles north-east of Stroud, at the age of three.

One of eight children, he left home at the age of 19 to seek his fortune busking with his violin, and labouring on building sites in London. In 1935 he famously went to Spain, returning there during the Civil War to help the anti-Fascist cause with the Republican International Brigades.

The story of those particular journeys are told in his books As I Walked Out One Morning, A Rose for Winter and A Moment of War.

But it was the publication of Cider with Rosie - recognised, to this day, as a classic - that won him everlasting acclaim, and which tells the story of his early life in Slad through a series of lyrical and vivid recollections.

It captured images of village life from a bygone era of innocence and simplicity. The account of his Cotswolds boyhood remains one of the UK’s favourite books, and tells of village life before the invasion of motorcars and farm machines.

His village, and the countryside which surrounds it, has changed little in the intervening period, and is still recognisable to visitors from the way he describes it in his writings. It remains a special village, in an almost secret valley…with one of the most authentic pubs in The Cotswolds!

Lee himself admitted that it took him two years to complete Cider with Rosie, and that it was written three times. But the end result is a lyrical account of lazy, hazy days in The Cotswolds: “The day Rosie Burdock decided to take me in hand was a motionless day of summer, creamy, hazy and amber-coloured, with beech trees standing in heavy sunlight as though clogged with wild wet honey. It was the time of hay-making…”

This was to be his first taste of “never to be forgotten” cider: “That first long secret drink of golden fire, juice of those valleys and of that time, wine of wild orchards, of russet summer, or plump red apples, and Rosie’s burning cheeks….”

Cider with Rosie made him enough money to return to Slad, and he is buried in the churchyard overlooking his beloved Woolpack Inn. A specially commissioned stained glass window in the church stands as a permanent memorial to the author. And visitors are able to follow footpaths and well-marked trails around the Cotswolds countryside which inspired his writing.

For further tourist information for The Cotswolds, visit www.cotswolds.com . [Ends]

For all media enquiries, please contact:Sara Chardin or Shirley WoodTel:01453 754307Email: cotswoldstourism@stroud.gov.uk

ATTACHED IMAGE: important message“Slad Valley” [and please credit Nick Turner, www.nickturnerphoto.com]