0:00:05 > 0:00:08"A tropic heat oozed up from the ground,
0:00:08 > 0:00:11"rank with sharp odours of roots and nettles.
0:00:11 > 0:00:14"Snow-clouds of elder-blossom banked in the sky,
0:00:14 > 0:00:16"showering upon me the fumes and flakes of
0:00:16 > 0:00:19"their sweet and giddy suffocation.
0:00:19 > 0:00:22"For the first time in my life,
0:00:22 > 0:00:24"I was out of the sight of humans.
0:00:24 > 0:00:28"I was lost and I did not expect to be found again."
0:00:31 > 0:00:36And I remember the first time I was lost in Cider With Rosie.
0:00:36 > 0:00:40I'd been given a copy - this copy in fact -
0:00:40 > 0:00:43by my best friend at university,
0:00:43 > 0:00:45and I was immediately beguiled -
0:00:45 > 0:00:46spellbound, even -
0:00:46 > 0:00:50by its sensuous descriptions of Cotswold life,
0:00:50 > 0:00:55Cotswold landscape, and the community in which Laurie Lee grew up,
0:00:55 > 0:00:58but I also love the fact that he didn't hide
0:00:58 > 0:01:03from the harsher realities of life here in his childhood.
0:01:05 > 0:01:06'In this programme,
0:01:06 > 0:01:11'I want to discover the real story behind Cider With Rosie...'
0:01:11 > 0:01:13This "Poppy" was really called Rosie.
0:01:13 > 0:01:15Oh, so this is Rosie?
0:01:15 > 0:01:18'..see the myth-maker in action...'
0:01:18 > 0:01:20He's kind of playing with the words, again and again.
0:01:20 > 0:01:23To have a more dramatic effect.
0:01:23 > 0:01:26'..and find out why the book was such a success.'
0:01:26 > 0:01:30Laurie Lee really creates a kind of Cotswold Arcadia in his book here.
0:01:33 > 0:01:35I've been writing books all my life,
0:01:35 > 0:01:37certainly since the age of 14,
0:01:37 > 0:01:41but as a reader, few books have ever given me
0:01:41 > 0:01:46quite the thrill of this spellbinding memoir.
0:01:48 > 0:01:51PAGES FLUTTER
0:02:03 > 0:02:08Published in 1959, but set almost 40 years earlier,
0:02:08 > 0:02:10just after the First World War,
0:02:10 > 0:02:14Laurie Lee's classic takes place in the tiny Cotswold community of Slad.
0:02:15 > 0:02:18'I was born just a few miles away,
0:02:18 > 0:02:21'and I have a particular connection to this book.'
0:02:23 > 0:02:27This is the church where my great-aunt Muriel's husband,
0:02:27 > 0:02:32Uncle Cyril, was vicar of Slad from 1931,
0:02:32 > 0:02:35so Laurie Lee would have sat here
0:02:35 > 0:02:40and heard my great-uncle preach the word of the Lord,
0:02:40 > 0:02:44and I had no idea until Cider With Rosie was published that there
0:02:44 > 0:02:50was any family connection between the great writer and my family.
0:02:50 > 0:02:54One of the most remarkable things about Cider With Rosie is
0:02:54 > 0:02:56that for readers who indeed have
0:02:56 > 0:02:59no family connection with the book,
0:02:59 > 0:03:01there is still this intense
0:03:01 > 0:03:04feeling of personal connection.
0:03:09 > 0:03:13The book's highly stylised and impressionistic chapters
0:03:13 > 0:03:17glow with nostalgic recollections of early childhood.
0:03:18 > 0:03:21In the same year the book was published,
0:03:21 > 0:03:25Laurie Lee returned to Slad, joined by a BBC film crew.
0:03:27 > 0:03:30"The village to which our family had come was a scattering of some
0:03:30 > 0:03:35"20 to 30 houses down the south-east slump of the valley.
0:03:35 > 0:03:40"The valley was narrow, steep and almost entirely cut off.
0:03:40 > 0:03:44"It was also a funnel for winds, a channel for the floods,
0:03:44 > 0:03:48"and a jungly, bird-crammed, insect-hopping suntrap,
0:03:48 > 0:03:50"whenever there happened to be any sun."
0:03:52 > 0:03:56All human life tumbles riotously from the pages of Cider With Rosie -
0:03:56 > 0:03:59from colourful characters like the warring grannies
0:03:59 > 0:04:01and the bumbling squire,
0:04:01 > 0:04:05to formative moments, like village celebrations and murderous pacts.
0:04:05 > 0:04:10All contained within a curious quirk of geography - a remote valley,
0:04:10 > 0:04:13for centuries, virtually cut off from a changing world.
0:04:15 > 0:04:19If you get, perhaps, just an edge of what Laurie Lee felt
0:04:19 > 0:04:24so passionately, this sense of extraordinary connectedness to
0:04:24 > 0:04:28an ancient past which, in a way, has gone,
0:04:28 > 0:04:31- and I suppose, it really has gone, now, forever, hasn't it?- Mm-hmm.
0:04:31 > 0:04:33I think he felt almost duty-bound to just record the last
0:04:33 > 0:04:37vestiges of this culture, this way of life,
0:04:37 > 0:04:40that had existed for... over millennia,
0:04:40 > 0:04:42sealed in amber in this amazing valley.
0:04:42 > 0:04:45And it's captured best of all by this quote here,
0:04:45 > 0:04:48in which he says, "The village, in fact,
0:04:48 > 0:04:52"was like a deep-running cave, still linked to its antic past,
0:04:52 > 0:04:55"a cave whose shadows were cluttered by spirits
0:04:55 > 0:04:58"and by laws still vaguely ancestral."
0:04:58 > 0:05:02It's a tantalising notion, and whenever I read it,
0:05:02 > 0:05:04it sends tingles down my spine.
0:05:04 > 0:05:08It has a visceral power, especially in a place like here.
0:05:08 > 0:05:12Laurie Lee says that it went back to the ice.
0:05:12 > 0:05:15He says, you know, the valley, it's been here since the Stone Age,
0:05:15 > 0:05:18and "arriving, as I did, at the end of that age,
0:05:18 > 0:05:21"I caught whiffs of something as old as the glaciers."
0:05:21 > 0:05:24Yeah. We are figures in this landscape,
0:05:24 > 0:05:26because we are meant to be in such a landscape.
0:05:26 > 0:05:29Yes, I mean it's part of the pastoral tradition,
0:05:29 > 0:05:33and Laurie Lee really creates a kind of Cotswold Arcadia
0:05:33 > 0:05:34in his book here,
0:05:34 > 0:05:37and this is his return ticket to that place.
0:05:40 > 0:05:44But the first childhood vision of this Arcadia is disconcerting,
0:05:44 > 0:05:46even distressing,
0:05:46 > 0:05:49as Laurie Lee recounts in the book's iconic opening lines.
0:05:51 > 0:05:56"I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three,
0:05:56 > 0:05:59"and there, with a sense of bewilderment and terror,
0:05:59 > 0:06:01"my life in the village began.
0:06:01 > 0:06:04"The June grass, amongst which I stood,
0:06:04 > 0:06:07"was taller than I was, and I wept.
0:06:07 > 0:06:10"I'd never been so close to grass before.
0:06:10 > 0:06:12"It towered above me and all around me,
0:06:12 > 0:06:16"each blade tattooed with tiger-skins of sunlight.
0:06:19 > 0:06:21"That was the day we came to the village,
0:06:21 > 0:06:24"in the summer of the last year of the First World War.
0:06:24 > 0:06:27"To a cottage on a steep bank above a lake -
0:06:27 > 0:06:30"a cottage with three floors and a cellar,
0:06:30 > 0:06:31"and a treasure in the walls,
0:06:31 > 0:06:34"with a pump and apple trees, syringa and strawberries,
0:06:34 > 0:06:37"rooks in the chimneys, frogs in the cellar,
0:06:37 > 0:06:38"mushrooms on the ceiling,
0:06:38 > 0:06:41"and all for three and sixpence a week."
0:06:41 > 0:06:43So this is it.
0:06:43 > 0:06:46After 50 years of reading about it, I am, at last,
0:06:46 > 0:06:48going down the steps to this house.
0:06:51 > 0:06:56'Nowadays, almost a century after Laurie Lee's vividly evoked arrival,
0:06:56 > 0:06:59'Hester Collins lives here with her own young family.
0:06:59 > 0:07:01'She's going to show me a part of the building
0:07:01 > 0:07:04'that's pretty much unchanged from Lee's time.'
0:07:06 > 0:07:07Come on down. Come and see this.
0:07:07 > 0:07:11- Oh, my goodness, it really is down. - It is.
0:07:11 > 0:07:13- My goodness, it's down. - It certainly is.
0:07:13 > 0:07:15Oh, heavens.
0:07:16 > 0:07:18- The Lee cellar.- Yes. - The famous cellar.
0:07:18 > 0:07:21- It is.- How incredible.
0:07:21 > 0:07:24My goodness, so...
0:07:24 > 0:07:26"Strawberries and syringa,
0:07:26 > 0:07:28"mushrooms in the ceiling, frogs in the cellar,
0:07:28 > 0:07:31"all for three and sixpence a week."
0:07:31 > 0:07:33Were there frogs in the cellar?
0:07:33 > 0:07:35Seven years ago, when we bought this place, yes,
0:07:35 > 0:07:38and a tree growing to the roof.
0:07:38 > 0:07:41This space really brings to mind the young boy's
0:07:41 > 0:07:46fear of the supernatural men who he believed lived between the walls.
0:07:46 > 0:07:48In his febrile imagination,
0:07:48 > 0:07:51they looked like old gods gone mouldy,
0:07:51 > 0:07:54but the house wasn't only crowded with ghosts -
0:07:54 > 0:07:59Laurie Lee was just one of a rowdy brood of children.
0:07:59 > 0:08:01Annie Lee, Laurie's mother,
0:08:01 > 0:08:04looked after eight children, was it, here?
0:08:04 > 0:08:07We think it's about eight, and perhaps 11 at one time.
0:08:07 > 0:08:08And you're a family of four?
0:08:08 > 0:08:11We're a family of four and it's quite small, so...
0:08:11 > 0:08:15And do you find that visitors come up onto the famous bank up
0:08:15 > 0:08:16- there on the road?- Yes.
0:08:16 > 0:08:19Where Laurie Lee was set down in those grasses.
0:08:19 > 0:08:20What are they doing?
0:08:20 > 0:08:22I mean, do you think they are capturing a lost childhood?
0:08:22 > 0:08:25I think they're just coming back to, perhaps, a childhood
0:08:25 > 0:08:27or a memory of their grandparents -
0:08:27 > 0:08:30a part of time, which we have lost in many places now.
0:08:30 > 0:08:31And he knew it.
0:08:31 > 0:08:33BIRDS CHIRP
0:08:35 > 0:08:39Written at a time when Britain was still in the grip of
0:08:39 > 0:08:41grey post-war austerity,
0:08:41 > 0:08:45Cider With Rosie taps into deep roots in our national psyche.
0:08:45 > 0:08:48There's a tremendous taste for
0:08:48 > 0:08:50this kind of thing,
0:08:50 > 0:08:55in the aftermath of the...
0:08:55 > 0:08:57- the Second World War.- Yes.
0:08:57 > 0:09:00For, you know, "England's green and pleasant land", as it were.
0:09:00 > 0:09:03A utopian craving,
0:09:03 > 0:09:06and I think that's one way of thinking about
0:09:06 > 0:09:09what Laurie Lee is doing.
0:09:09 > 0:09:11Do you think it's a memoir?
0:09:11 > 0:09:14Do think it's a bit of autobiography?
0:09:14 > 0:09:16I would call it elegy.
0:09:16 > 0:09:20It's all about the ruin of the past, and so on...
0:09:20 > 0:09:23- A forgotten world. - ..and it's got elegiac notes about
0:09:23 > 0:09:25things that have gone now.
0:09:25 > 0:09:28It is certainly pastoral.
0:09:28 > 0:09:35The opening shots are in an extremely poetic kind of prose,
0:09:35 > 0:09:39and I would say that, in those kind of episodes,
0:09:39 > 0:09:42he's trying to write prose poetry.
0:09:46 > 0:09:50One of his great feats of literary showmanship
0:09:50 > 0:09:55is set in the chapter in this very building,
0:09:55 > 0:10:00where he telescopes a decade of education
0:10:00 > 0:10:06into merely 20 pages of Cider With Rosie.
0:10:06 > 0:10:11He paints a portrait of a Victorian school system,
0:10:11 > 0:10:16mired still in a rigid, 19th-century rule book.
0:10:22 > 0:10:25"We learnt nothing abstract or tenuous there,
0:10:25 > 0:10:28"just simple patterns of facts and letters,
0:10:28 > 0:10:31"portable tricks of calculation.
0:10:31 > 0:10:35"Unhearing, unquestioning, we rocked to our chanting,
0:10:35 > 0:10:38"hammering the gold nails home.
0:10:38 > 0:10:40"Twice two are four.
0:10:40 > 0:10:43"One God is love, one Lord is king,
0:10:43 > 0:10:45"one king is George,
0:10:45 > 0:10:47"one George is fifth.
0:10:47 > 0:10:50"So it was, always had been, would be forever.
0:10:50 > 0:10:54"We asked no questions. We didn't hear what we said,
0:10:54 > 0:10:57"yet neither did we ever forget it."
0:11:00 > 0:11:02At Gloucester Folk Museum,
0:11:02 > 0:11:04they've recreated the school conditions
0:11:04 > 0:11:06from the early days of Laurie Lee,
0:11:06 > 0:11:09and despite all that rigid rote learning,
0:11:09 > 0:11:12the young Laurie did show some early literary promise,
0:11:12 > 0:11:16as poet and family friend Adam Horovitz recently discovered.
0:11:17 > 0:11:22I've got here an essay that he wrote
0:11:22 > 0:11:24for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds'
0:11:24 > 0:11:26- Bird and Tree Competition. - My goodness.
0:11:26 > 0:11:30- My goodness, which would have... - Aged 11.- Aged 11.
0:11:30 > 0:11:32- With immaculate handwriting, I see. - Exquisite handwriting.
0:11:32 > 0:11:35- What's it about? - It's about a dabchick.
0:11:35 > 0:11:41- Can you see any signs in it of his dawning talent?- There are...
0:11:41 > 0:11:44There are certainly signs towards the end
0:11:44 > 0:11:47that some of the lyrical style creeps in,
0:11:47 > 0:11:49amongst the slightly clunky grammar,
0:11:49 > 0:11:51and the spelling and the crossings-out.
0:11:51 > 0:11:54"Soon, a big black-and-white dog came along,
0:11:54 > 0:11:59"and their father called in loud click-clicks,
0:11:59 > 0:12:01"and with a lot of pip-pips,
0:12:01 > 0:12:04"the young ones all rushed to their parents.
0:12:04 > 0:12:06"Two got under their mother's wing,
0:12:06 > 0:12:08"and the other three got under the father's wing,
0:12:08 > 0:12:11"and they both dived, and brought them to the reeds,
0:12:11 > 0:12:13"where they could hide.
0:12:13 > 0:12:16"Then they grew, and they will soon be going away."
0:12:19 > 0:12:23Laurie Lee was to fly the nest himself in the years to come,
0:12:23 > 0:12:26at the age of 19, with dreams of being a poet.
0:12:26 > 0:12:27He set out from Slad,
0:12:27 > 0:12:31and his aim was to make his mark on the literary world.
0:12:31 > 0:12:33Thus began a series of adventures,
0:12:33 > 0:12:35crisscrossing the globe,
0:12:35 > 0:12:40and culminating in the fight against Franco in 1930s Spain -
0:12:40 > 0:12:44an episode that was to inspire much of his early writing.
0:12:44 > 0:12:47When he came back, rather than Slad,
0:12:47 > 0:12:51it was the bustle of London and its cosmopolitan, artistic society,
0:12:51 > 0:12:53that he chose to call home,
0:12:53 > 0:12:57and where he began a series of jobs with the BBC and the Government,
0:12:57 > 0:13:02all the time maintaining a busy publishing career on the side.
0:13:02 > 0:13:07This pub, on Fulham Road, was among his favourite haunts.
0:13:07 > 0:13:09So, Laurie Lee would have sat here,
0:13:09 > 0:13:12regaling friends and people in the pub with
0:13:12 > 0:13:14stories of the Spanish Civil War,
0:13:14 > 0:13:18and his travels in India and in Spain,
0:13:18 > 0:13:23and if anyone had told him then that the book which would make him
0:13:23 > 0:13:28immortal was a memoir of his childhood in Slad,
0:13:28 > 0:13:32I really think he'd have choked on his pint.
0:13:32 > 0:13:36While earlier publications by Laurie Lee hadn't made much of a mark,
0:13:36 > 0:13:39Cider With Rosie became a classic overnight.
0:13:39 > 0:13:42The publishers had hoped to sell 800 copies in total
0:13:42 > 0:13:44but by the end of 1959,
0:13:44 > 0:13:49it was selling up to 1,600 a day and winning prestigious prizes.
0:13:49 > 0:13:52Mr Lee, did it cost you a great deal of time and trouble
0:13:52 > 0:13:54and mental effort to write it?
0:13:54 > 0:13:55Yes.
0:13:55 > 0:13:57It gave me pleasure to write it.
0:13:57 > 0:14:00I always wanted to write it, but it caused...
0:14:00 > 0:14:03I shut myself up two years in the process of writing it.
0:14:03 > 0:14:07I was down there on the edge of Fulham Road, with blinds drawn.
0:14:07 > 0:14:09For two sodded years, my friends never saw me.
0:14:09 > 0:14:13I wrote it three times before, erm...
0:14:13 > 0:14:16Three times, I sort of carved it about and chopped it down,
0:14:16 > 0:14:18and refined it and so on.
0:14:18 > 0:14:20Yeah, there was a lot of sweat to it.
0:14:22 > 0:14:26The difficult and laborious creation of Cider With Rosie can be
0:14:26 > 0:14:30seen in the original manuscript, held at the British library.
0:14:30 > 0:14:32- What you will see...- Oh, look!
0:14:32 > 0:14:35- It's on the back of something.- Yes.
0:14:35 > 0:14:37- What is this?- These are BBC scripts.
0:14:37 > 0:14:40He did work for the BBC in the '50s,
0:14:40 > 0:14:43and this manuscript was written in the '50s.
0:14:43 > 0:14:46- Right.- So it could be that these were things he was working on.
0:14:46 > 0:14:51It could be also, that this was just a wish to re-use paper.
0:14:51 > 0:14:55Now, what's fascinating about, you know, a passage like this,
0:14:55 > 0:14:57is that we can see the changes.
0:14:57 > 0:14:59You can see where he wrote it up,
0:14:59 > 0:15:04and I see that he writes here about this time,
0:15:04 > 0:15:07just after the first war,
0:15:07 > 0:15:10and he writes, "a sombre event",
0:15:10 > 0:15:13and then he crosses it out, and replaces it with "violent".
0:15:13 > 0:15:15Yes, he does, and then he writes again,
0:15:15 > 0:15:18"A thing of mystery. A thing...
0:15:18 > 0:15:20"A thing of violence, a thing of mystery."
0:15:20 > 0:15:22So, he's kind of playing with the words again and again.
0:15:22 > 0:15:25- To have a more dramatic effect.- Yes.
0:15:25 > 0:15:30Because he wanted, really, to punch us with his horrible image.
0:15:30 > 0:15:31- Yes.- Didn't he?
0:15:31 > 0:15:33It wasn't always sweetness and light and haymaking.
0:15:33 > 0:15:36- There were some very savage things that happened.- Yes.
0:15:38 > 0:15:40These painstakingly worked-over words
0:15:40 > 0:15:45introduce one of the book's most chilling episodes -
0:15:45 > 0:15:48the account of a brutal murder from Lee's childhood.
0:15:55 > 0:15:58It's just a few days before Christmas,
0:15:58 > 0:16:04and the inhabitants of Slad are drinking in their local pub,
0:16:04 > 0:16:07and they are disturbed by the appearance -
0:16:07 > 0:16:08the sudden appearance -
0:16:08 > 0:16:12of a long-lost son of the village.
0:16:13 > 0:16:17"The door blew open to a gust of snow
0:16:17 > 0:16:20"and a tall man strode into the bar.
0:16:22 > 0:16:25"Years ago, as a pale and bony lad,
0:16:25 > 0:16:30"he'd been packed off to one of the colonies, sent by subscription,
0:16:30 > 0:16:34"and the prayers of the church, as many a poor boy before him.
0:16:34 > 0:16:37"Usually they went and were never heard from again,
0:16:37 > 0:16:41"and their existence was soon forgotten.
0:16:41 > 0:16:45"Now one of them had returned like a gilded ghost,
0:16:45 > 0:16:49"successful and richly dressed,
0:16:49 > 0:16:53"and he'd come back to taunt the stay-at-homes
0:16:53 > 0:16:56"with his boasting talk and his money."
0:16:59 > 0:17:01In the pages that follow,
0:17:01 > 0:17:03Lee describes the murder of this man,
0:17:03 > 0:17:07who apparently had made his fortune farming cattle in New Zealand,
0:17:07 > 0:17:10and how a conspiracy of silence engulfed the village
0:17:10 > 0:17:13in the months and years to follow,
0:17:13 > 0:17:16but just how true to life is this retelling?
0:17:20 > 0:17:22Let's go.
0:17:22 > 0:17:27'Local historian Elizabeth Skinner knows where the victim was buried,
0:17:27 > 0:17:29'but his gravestone in nearby Sheepscombe
0:17:29 > 0:17:32'has some surprising revelations.'
0:17:32 > 0:17:34And so here is the grave,
0:17:34 > 0:17:36which amazes me,
0:17:36 > 0:17:40because this looks to me like a War Graves Commission headstone.
0:17:40 > 0:17:44Indeed it is. Albert Birt was a discharged soldier,
0:17:44 > 0:17:50and soldiers were entitled to a war grave until the 31st of August 1921,
0:17:50 > 0:17:53- and he died in 1919.- Oh, really?
0:17:53 > 0:17:57In no part of Cider With Rosie does Laurie Lee mentioned that
0:17:57 > 0:17:59Birt was a serviceman,
0:17:59 > 0:18:02but Elizabeth has some more surprises in store.
0:18:02 > 0:18:07We found the report of the inquest in the Stroud Journal in 1919,
0:18:07 > 0:18:10and it told us what we thought would probably be
0:18:10 > 0:18:11the closest to the truth.
0:18:11 > 0:18:14Albert Birt was a local man.
0:18:14 > 0:18:16He'd grown up here.
0:18:16 > 0:18:18But did he go to New Zealand? I mean, was he...?
0:18:18 > 0:18:22We have no evidence that he ever went to New Zealand,
0:18:22 > 0:18:25but at the time of the incident,
0:18:25 > 0:18:27he was living in Manchester
0:18:27 > 0:18:30- and working as a woodturner...- Ah.
0:18:30 > 0:18:34..and he'd come back from Manchester to visit his sister.
0:18:34 > 0:18:36Now, in Cider With Rosie,
0:18:36 > 0:18:38we are told that he's come back just at Christmas
0:18:38 > 0:18:41- to see his parents...- His parents.
0:18:41 > 0:18:43..and of course, it's not Christmas.
0:18:43 > 0:18:45It's March.
0:18:45 > 0:18:47The idea of a secret,
0:18:47 > 0:18:53and the idea of a community cohering tightly together to defend a secret,
0:18:53 > 0:18:55is very much there, isn't it?
0:18:55 > 0:18:59Do you think that was Laurie Lee's aim
0:18:59 > 0:19:04in embroidering the story or poeticising the story the way he did?
0:19:04 > 0:19:07It's a good image, isn't it?
0:19:07 > 0:19:11That of keeping the story within the village,
0:19:11 > 0:19:15and he wanted to give this kind of impression of this closed
0:19:15 > 0:19:18society in this valley.
0:19:18 > 0:19:20- A kind of Eden of the past... - Yes, yes.
0:19:20 > 0:19:24..where the loyalty to your neighbour outstripped
0:19:24 > 0:19:27- your loyalty to almost anything else. - Everything, everything else.
0:19:31 > 0:19:33The account of the murdered ex-serviceman,
0:19:33 > 0:19:36dressed up in mythic terms by Lee,
0:19:36 > 0:19:38is a reminder of the impact of the Great War
0:19:38 > 0:19:40on small, rural communities.
0:19:42 > 0:19:45It's something that colours everything in Cider With Rosie,
0:19:45 > 0:19:48including one of its most famous scenes.
0:19:49 > 0:19:55"The first big festival that I can remember was Peace Day in 1919.
0:19:55 > 0:19:58"It was a day of magical transformation, of tears,
0:19:58 > 0:20:00"and dusty sunlight.
0:20:00 > 0:20:03"I was John Bull - whoever he was -
0:20:03 > 0:20:05"but I quickly surmised his importance.
0:20:05 > 0:20:08"Later, I was photographed in a group by a rockery,
0:20:08 > 0:20:11"surrounded by girls in butter muslin,
0:20:11 > 0:20:13"by druids and eastern kings.
0:20:13 > 0:20:17"I am a figure rooted in unshakeable confidence,
0:20:17 > 0:20:20"oval, substantial and proud."
0:20:27 > 0:20:30- Oh, my goodness. - That's the photograph of Laurie
0:20:30 > 0:20:32that's mentioned in the book.
0:20:32 > 0:20:34And that must be Laurie in the middle.
0:20:34 > 0:20:37That's Laurie there in the top hat, yes.
0:20:37 > 0:20:42Mentioned in the book, stood next to him is Poppy.
0:20:42 > 0:20:44- This is Poppy.- Poppy?
0:20:44 > 0:20:45And this is interesting.
0:20:45 > 0:20:48- She looks a little minx, doesn't she? - She does.
0:20:48 > 0:20:50This is interesting if you bear in mind that one of
0:20:50 > 0:20:53the early drafts of Cider With Rosie
0:20:53 > 0:20:56- had it as Cider With Poppy.- Really?
0:20:56 > 0:21:00This Poppy was really called Rosie, of course.
0:21:00 > 0:21:02- Oh, she was? This one was called Rosie?- Yes, this Poppy is...
0:21:02 > 0:21:04Oh, so this is Rosie? Do you think?
0:21:04 > 0:21:07This is the Rosie who died very recently,
0:21:07 > 0:21:11and who certainly has been proclaimed as the Rosie in the book,
0:21:11 > 0:21:14though Laurie said, over many years,
0:21:14 > 0:21:18that he's drawn in a number of different elements of characters,
0:21:18 > 0:21:21but there is a very strong suggestion that this
0:21:21 > 0:21:24Rosie or Poppy was the original.
0:21:24 > 0:21:28Though there have been many women over the years who have stood up
0:21:28 > 0:21:30in a sort of a Slad Valley "I'm Spartacus" moment,
0:21:30 > 0:21:33saying, "I was Rosie, I was Rosie."
0:21:33 > 0:21:35So there's certain traces of all of them.
0:21:37 > 0:21:41But the Rosie who emerges from the pages of this book
0:21:41 > 0:21:43is a fully-formed character in her own right,
0:21:43 > 0:21:48one who has made as much of an impact in the memories of readers
0:21:48 > 0:21:50as she did in Laurie Lee's imagination.
0:21:53 > 0:21:56"The day Rosie Burdock decided to take me in hand
0:21:56 > 0:21:59"was a motionless day of summer,
0:21:59 > 0:22:01"creamy, hazy and amber coloured,
0:22:01 > 0:22:04"with the beech trees standing in heavy sunlight,
0:22:04 > 0:22:07"as though clogged with wild, wet honey."
0:22:10 > 0:22:12It's harvest time in Slad,
0:22:12 > 0:22:15and Rosie has got hold of a jar of cider,
0:22:15 > 0:22:21which she's going to share with the young and impressionable Laurie.
0:22:21 > 0:22:24"Huge and squat, the jar lay on the grass like an unexploded bomb.
0:22:27 > 0:22:30"We lifted it up, unscrewed the stopper,
0:22:30 > 0:22:34"and smelt the whiff of fermented apples.
0:22:34 > 0:22:37"I held the jar to my mouth and rolled my eyes sideways,
0:22:37 > 0:22:39"like a beast at a waterhole.
0:22:41 > 0:22:43" 'Go on,' said Rosie."
0:22:49 > 0:22:54Now, every word of this is steeped in sexual tension,
0:22:54 > 0:22:56and we can see Laurie Lee relying on biblical motives -
0:22:56 > 0:23:00notably, obviously, with the Garden of Eden -
0:23:00 > 0:23:07to heighten this atmosphere of myth, of mythology,
0:23:07 > 0:23:10but he subverts the tradition,
0:23:10 > 0:23:15and as the young man succumbs to temptation, and drinks the cider,
0:23:15 > 0:23:21it yields to him a veritable horde of heavenly delights.
0:23:25 > 0:23:27"Never to be forgotten,
0:23:27 > 0:23:31"that first long secret drink of golden fire,
0:23:31 > 0:23:34"juice of those valleys and of that time,
0:23:34 > 0:23:38"the wine of wild orchards, of russet summer,
0:23:38 > 0:23:42"of plump red apples and Rosie's burning cheeks.
0:23:42 > 0:23:46"Never to be forgotten, or ever tasted again."
0:23:52 > 0:23:55It wasn't just Laurie who succumbed to the charms of Rosie.
0:23:55 > 0:23:59This is the chapter that ensured the book's enduring popularity
0:23:59 > 0:24:01for generations to come,
0:24:01 > 0:24:03and with the proceeds of the book,
0:24:03 > 0:24:07Lee returned to his home village of Slad and bought a cottage,
0:24:07 > 0:24:09but while further books followed,
0:24:09 > 0:24:13none quite caught the imagination of the public like Cider With Rosie.
0:24:15 > 0:24:19The success of Cider With Rosie changed Laurie Lee's life,
0:24:19 > 0:24:23finally and irrevocably,
0:24:23 > 0:24:28but the popularity of his masterpiece has had a lasting effect
0:24:28 > 0:24:31on the reputation of the book itself.
0:24:33 > 0:24:34It's a good case, isn't it?
0:24:34 > 0:24:37Of the instant classic, as it were,
0:24:37 > 0:24:42that then curiously fades away.
0:24:42 > 0:24:44One aspect of that, I think,
0:24:44 > 0:24:48is that it got itself taken up as a school book.
0:24:48 > 0:24:52It became a book that every schoolchild was supposed to read.
0:24:52 > 0:24:54"Good for kids."
0:24:54 > 0:24:56Kind of a fate worse than death, really.
0:24:57 > 0:25:01Despite that fate, for me, there is one chapter in this book that
0:25:01 > 0:25:05shows just how significant and enduring Lee's writing is.
0:25:07 > 0:25:10This is the last place I've come to
0:25:10 > 0:25:13on my journey through Laurie Lee country
0:25:13 > 0:25:16and it's to the graveyard in Slad.
0:25:16 > 0:25:19Laurie himself is buried over there.
0:25:19 > 0:25:22He's been there these last 20 years -
0:25:22 > 0:25:26but I haven't come to find Laurie Lee.
0:25:26 > 0:25:28I've come to find someone else.
0:25:33 > 0:25:37"Our mother was a buffoon, extravagant and romantic,
0:25:37 > 0:25:40"and was never taken wholly seriously,
0:25:40 > 0:25:43"but within her, she nourished a delicacy of taste,
0:25:43 > 0:25:45"a sensibility,
0:25:45 > 0:25:47"a brightness of spirit,
0:25:47 > 0:25:49"which though continuously bludgeoned
0:25:49 > 0:25:50"by the cruelties of her luck,
0:25:50 > 0:25:54"remained uncrushed and unembittered to the end."
0:25:59 > 0:26:04This is the grave of Annie Emily Lee, nee Light -
0:26:04 > 0:26:06Laurie's mother -
0:26:06 > 0:26:11and as you can see, it's very neglected and unkempt.
0:26:13 > 0:26:17But in the chapter about her in Cider With Rosie,
0:26:17 > 0:26:20which is simply called Mother,
0:26:20 > 0:26:25Laurie Lee pays her one of the most profound
0:26:25 > 0:26:32and powerful tributes made to any human being in all literature,
0:26:32 > 0:26:38and although there are examples of events and people being
0:26:38 > 0:26:43really made mythic in Cider With Rosie,
0:26:43 > 0:26:45his portrait of his mother,
0:26:45 > 0:26:49of Annie Lee, is completely unfeigned.
0:26:50 > 0:26:55"Nothing now that I ever see that has an edge of gold around it -
0:26:55 > 0:26:59"the change of a season, a jewelled bird in a bush,
0:26:59 > 0:27:02"the eyes of orchids, water in the evening,
0:27:02 > 0:27:04"a thistle, a picture, a poem -
0:27:04 > 0:27:08"but my pleasure pays some brief duty to her.
0:27:08 > 0:27:12"She tried me at times to the top of my bent,
0:27:12 > 0:27:15"but I absorbed from birth, as now I know,
0:27:15 > 0:27:19"the whole earth through her jaunty spirit."
0:27:23 > 0:27:26Laurie Lee's recollections of childhood in the aftermath
0:27:26 > 0:27:30of the Great War, but written in the shadow of another conflict,
0:27:30 > 0:27:34may be more impressionistic than conventional memoirs,
0:27:34 > 0:27:38but this book tells us so much about the experience of growing up
0:27:38 > 0:27:42that a scrupulously literal account might not.
0:27:42 > 0:27:48After the Second World War, readers were hungry for a lost Eden,
0:27:48 > 0:27:51and Laurie Lee gave them just that,
0:27:51 > 0:27:54painting a picture of a vanished world
0:27:54 > 0:27:57which was full, certainly, of sensuous delights,
0:27:57 > 0:28:01but also of savagery and cruelty,
0:28:01 > 0:28:04and that picture has lasted, now,
0:28:04 > 0:28:08and resonated for almost 60 years.
0:28:08 > 0:28:10Long may it continue to do so.
0:28:17 > 0:28:21If you want to know more about Laurie Lee's Cider With Rosie,
0:28:21 > 0:28:24or any of the other books in the series, then go to...
0:28:31 > 0:28:33..and follow the links to the Open University.