By Matt Shinn
From Issue 44, November 2018
“I went to see Laurie Lee and he was happy to do it. So we made a TV programme about him.”
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Except that Laurie Lee didn’t ‘do’ TV: he didn’t like the way he came across on the small screen. So when, in 1994, a local documentary film-maker made a TV programme about Laurie, it was pretty much unique: this was the only time that Laurie really let his guard down, in front of a TV camera.
And now the full set of tapes that were made for the programme has come to light, after more than twenty years. Taken together, they provide an important record of Laurie’s views on his writing, on his childhood, and on the Slad Valley where he grew up.
So how did David Parker succeed in getting Laurie to agree to a TV programme, when so many others had failed? Approaching him at the right time, and in the right way, seems to have been key.
Together with his wife Wendy McLean, David had recently set up a TV production company, Available Light Productions, and was looking for ideas for programmes, ideally with a focus on the West Country. How about a documentary on Gloucestershire’s most famous literary son?
True to form, to begin with Laurie wasn’t keen. He said no, but agreed to meet David Parker in the Woolpack pub to talk about the project. Laurie relented a little, saying that he thought the programme was a good idea and that he would like to help, but just didn’t want to be in it – still not much use for a TV film about him. But then Laurie took David to visit various locations in Slad, and began talking about his work, his music, and what the locations meant to him. Returning with a film crew, David took Laurie slowly – over the course of five days – through the formative events of his early life, in the places where they had taken place.
So why the change of heart, on Laurie’s part? As well as the clear affinity between the two men (at the end of filming, Laurie inscribed a copy of Cider with Rosie ‘to David, a fellow traveller’), David Parker believes that the timing of his approach may have had something to do with it. “In 1994 Laurie was in his eightieth year”, he says, “and so he may have thought that his time was limited, and that this would be an easy way of telling people a little more about his past (the parts that he wanted to talk about, at any rate). As if it were his swansong.”
Quickly it became clear that, in person as well as on the page, Laurie Lee was a wonderful storyteller. “We sat him on a bench overlooking the cricket pitch, we sat him on a chair in the school, we took him up to Miserden church to see Frank Mansell’s grave. And we took him to Swift’s Hill, where he leaned on a gatepost. We got him to talk about his life, the influences on his writing, the techniques that he used in his books. He also spoke about his perception of the social structure of Gloucestershire when he was young, and the landscape and how it shaped the people and the language that he knew, and therefore how it shaped his writing.”
Much of this covers similar ground to Cider with Rosie, of course. But for David, “what you don’t get from Cider with Rosie is how Laurie came to write the book: the culture, the history, the anthropology and the geography of that valley, which shaped his thinking and the way he wrote. For example in the interviews he talks about the people in the valley not having a big vocabulary, but ‘by God’, he said, ‘they had a command of that vocabulary’. They learned their English from the King James Bible. Some of them couldn’t read, but they heard it. Laurie said ‘my God they could tell a story, like a sailor in Homer’s time’”.
In the interviews for the TV programme, Laurie even re-told some of the stories from Cider with Rosie: for example the tale of the man who returns to Slad, having made his fortune far away. But for David, “where the interviews take off from the book is where I was able to say things like ‘but Laurie, you returned also: how did you feel about coming back?’”.
Issue 44, November 2018 - cover by Mark Levy
In all, David recorded some 30,000 of Laurie’s words – far more than were needed for a half-hour programme. Once it was aired, Available Light moved on to other things, and David had thought that the original recordings had been thrown away, until they came to light in 2017 during an office move.
In time for the 60th anniversary of Cider with Rosie in 2019, David is finishing a book (to be published by Little Toller), which is comprised mostly of Laurie’s words from the interviews, but with the addition of comments from people who knew him. These include the poet Roger McGough, who became friends with Laurie after sharing platforms with him at poetry festivals, the classical guitarist Julian Bream (who Laurie used to accompany on the violin), and the ‘real’ Rosie of Cider with Rosie (Rosie Buckland), who was able to give David her side of the story, shortly before she died.
For this year’s Stroud Book Festival, David will also be giving an illustrated talk, exploring what the recordings tell us about Laurie Lee and the influences that shaped his writing. The event will include a screening of the 1994 film in its entirety, plus clips from the interviews that were not originally included in it. A rare chance to hear Laurie Lee speaking at length, in his own voice.
Laurie Lee: The Lost Recordings, a talk by David Parker takes place on Sunday 11th November at Lansdown Hall from 6-7pm. Tickets cost £8 and are available now from the Subscription Rooms. Visit stroudbookfestival.org.uk and davidparkertalks.co.uk for further info.
Matt Shinn runs Whole New Chapter Ltd, a Stroud-based editorial and design agency. wholenewchapter.co.uk
UPDATE! On Sunday 12th April we will be screening the 24min documentary over on our YouTube channel. Click here to watch the screening at 8pm and here for the facebook event page for further info…
As well as our recent project (Good On Paper TV) following Good On Paper’s current hiatus over the next few month’s we will be putting up articles from our archives for our readers to easily access and share…Community and culture can carry on in different ways. For now….