Down in the Valley Read online

  Towards the end of the afternoon Laurie repeated that he’d like to help me make the film but that he did not want to appear in it. How to solve the problem? I suggested a compromise. Suppose I came back to do pretty much what we had done that afternoon but this time with a sound recordist and a tape recorder. We would record our conversation, but only on sound; no pictures. He said that he would be happy with that arrangement. We parted having agreed a date, a Saturday in early April, when I would return. The day went extremely well. Laurie enjoyed himself and suggested I record him on film.

  I filmed Laurie in eight different locations in the Slad Valley, the small area of the Cotswolds, north of Stroud, which shaped his early life and his later poetry and prose. We ranged over a host of themes. He talked about family, childhood, writing, music, politics, poetry, local characters and local history and, again and again, the landscape: its villages, steep valleys, fast-flowing streams. He came back continually to the ways in which the valley had shaped his writing.

  The film we produced, ‘Laurie Lee’s Gloucestershire – A Writer’s Landscape’, was transmitted by HTV West on 21 August 1994, and subsequently by Channel 4 to commemorate Laurie’s death in May 1997.

  After transmission I filed the ‘rushes’, the tapes containing the recordings, and went on to other work. I always had it in mind to publish the recordings, but when I came to pay serious attention to the idea I couldn’t find them. For a while I thought that I had inadvertently destroyed them. Then, in late 2017 I came across them in an incorrectly labelled archive box. This book is the result of that rediscovery.

  The film I made with Laurie and the subsequent book would not have been possible without the help of Jeremy Payne, Bob Pitt, Peter Moseley, Chris Chapman, Anisa Farries, Joel Parker, Louis Parker, Melanie Nieuwenhuys and Claudio Ahlers, who assisted with recordings, and, subsequently, Colin Thomas, Jessy Lee, Norah Perkins, Thomas Penn, Richard Mason and, for his careful reading of the text and many helpful suggestions, John Richmond.

  David Parker

  Bristol, June 2019

  THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING

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  First published 2019

  Copyright © the Estate of Laurie Lee, 2019

  Afterword copyright © David Parker, 2019

  The moral right of the author and editor has been asserted

  Cover: Detail from Remnants of Snow Towards Slad by Andy Lovell

  ISBN: 978-0-241-41172-8

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Footnote

  1. The Village Pond

  1 The ‘chapel’ valleys are Ruscombe and Nailsworth.

  6. The Village School

  1 A farm cottage between Slad and Stroud.

  7. The Woolpack

  1 The then landlord.