Showing results by narrator "Laurie Lee" in All Categories

Abandoning the Cotswolds village that raised him, the young Laurie Lee walks to London. There he makes a living labouring and playing the violin. But, deciding to travel further a field and knowing only the Spanish phrase for 'Will you please give me a glass of water?', he heads for Spain. With just a blanket to sleep under and his trusty violin, he spends a year crossing Spain, from Vigo in the north to the southern coast. Only the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War puts an end to his extraordinary peregrinations.

Cider with Rosie is a wonderfully vivid memoir of childhood in a remote Cotswold village, a village before electricity or cars, a timeless place on the verge of change. Growing up amongst the fields and woods and characters of the place, Laurie Lee depicts a world that is both immediate and real and belongs to a now-distant past.

Two years ago, I chose him over me. Just because I was stuck in this small town, living a small-town life, didn't mean he had to be stuck, too. He had so much talent, and he was destined to do big things, but I knew he'd never leave without me. Not unless I made him. I knew it would break his heart, but it was the price I'd have to pay for his freedom.

Friday Night Live was a late night programme that pushed comedy on TV to new levels. Most TV comedy at that time was a rather safe affair full of middle aged comics and impersonators. Friday Night Live brought in a new generation of comedians; some from the growing club circuit and some along the path from University. On Volume 1, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie can be heard alongside Lee Evans and Jo Brand. This was her TV debut whilst Lee Evans was also just starting his own phenomenal career.

Laurie Lee was a poet, novelist and screenwriter renowned for his bestselling autobiographical trilogy Cider With Rosie, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and A Moment of War. Among the best loved memoirs in the English language, the books chart Lee’s life from his boyhood summers in a remote Cotswold village to joining the Republican International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. Included here are dramatisations of the first two volumes, alongside a specially written radio play and four fascinating interview programmes.