Celebrating Laurie Lee
The view over Swift’s Hill (c) Daniel Brown
This month would have seen Laurie Lee's 100th birthday. Having grown up in the same valley, buried in the exquisite landscape of Slad and in the imagined and intensely remembered landscapes of his poetry and prose, I was eager to help celebrate; so I came up with a pitch for a book. I had known Laurie a little as a child and young adult (he died when I was 26) but I didn't want to write a biography - that's been done before. What I wanted to write was the continuing story of the valley, acknowledging Laurie's presence in it, which hasn't faded with time and absence.
I showed the pitch to his daughter, Jessy, wanting to be sure that it wouldn't intrude on her plans for the centenary. She gave me the thumbs up. I then sent the pitch to various publishers and agents - and heard nothing. After nine months, I found my way to 23, a bar and bistro in Stroud, and cornered a friend over a bottle of wine, grumbling that I had heard nothing back and would have to give up the idea of the book. From the other end of the small bar in 23, I heard a snort and then a dark haired, bespectacled man leaned around my friend and stared at me over the Times crossword. After a moment, he said: "And why haven't you sent it to US?"
He turned out to be an editor from the History Press, who have published the book, A Thousand Laurie Lees, which was released on Monday. Thanks to circumstances beyond my control (I broke both my arms ten days after signing the contract) it has changed its form somewhat from that initial pitch - the original idea was to write a much more journalistic book, threaded through with memoir. It is now, essentially, my version of Cider with Rosie - I spent three months replanning it in my head, one arm in plaster, the other in a sling and was left no time to conduct interviews or walk the landscape as I had planned. So, like Laurie writing his memoirs at a far remove, I had to remember and recreate.
But that's not the only fortuitous circumstance (I mean the chance meeting of course, not the arm break) in my plans to commemorate Laurie Lee. I wanted to put on a show of poetry by many voices from the Slad valley; a poetic guided tour, so to speak. I wanted a fiddle player to accompany me. The only fiddle player I knew well enough to ask was Becky Dellow, who has been active on the folk scene of Stroud and beyond for many years. I asked her if she'd be interested. She gave me a curious look, and said yes.
The reason for the curious look turned out to be because her grandfather had played fiddle alongside Laurie in bands in the late 1920s and early 1930s. I hadn't realised or known this. Better still, her grandfather had left her his well-worn tune book, stuffed with hand-written tunes of the sort that he and Laurie would have played. So we had the beginnings of a show, A Slad Century in Poetry and Music.
Here is the history of the tune book in Becky's words:
"The tunes selected to complement the poems are from the traditional English dance music repertoire with the majority chosen from an old handwritten manuscript book which belonged to my great great grandfather, thought to date from the mid 1850s.
"This hand-stitched and well-worn tune book was passed on to me by my grandfather, Charles Hampton, in the 1990s. During the late 1920s and early 1930s Charles and Laurie Lee met regularly to play fiddle together and most likely would have played tunes from this book.
"There are thought to be a few hundred family tune books such as this, surviving in England and they would have been used by amateur musicians, to provide entertainment in their local villages. Often they combine music for popular songs of the time, English dance tunes and tunes of a religious nature suggesting that the musicians may also have played at Church on a Sunday and for dances and festivities at other times."
In September, Becky will start a PhD at Sheffield University, analysing these tune books, investigating what they tell us about the effects of orality and literacy on the transmission of English folk tunes and if they can be used to unearth new information to supplement the historiography of English folk music.
Given that Laurie's writing has stayed in the consciousness of Slad and Stroud, as well as far into the world beyond, in a way that echoes popular music's hold on people , it seemed like a perfect fit to bring together the poems of the Slad valley, by Laurie, Frank Mansell, my parents Michael and Frances Horovitz and myself and marry them to these tunes that would have kept people dancing around the valley 70 and more years ago.
A Slad Century in Poetry and Music will be performed at Stroud's Museum in the Park on June 12th and September 25th. Click here to find out more about booking tickets from the Museum. It will also be performed as part of Slad village's celebrations, in the garden of Rosebank, the house Laurie Lee grew up in, on June 22nd, accompanied by lashings of Pimms.*
There is a great deal happening in Slad and Stroud (and beyond) to celebrate 100 years of Laurie Lee - click here to see the online brochure.
*Adam and Becky are happy to travel with A Slad Century in Poetry and Music throughout the UK. If you'd like to know more, contact me on the Contact page of this website.
