The house relies on a small wood-fire for the cooking and a hand pump in the scullery for its water.

Peace Day in 1919 is a colourful affair, the procession ending up at the squire's house, where he and his elderly mother make speeches. Their new home is nestled deep in the valley, warmed by open fires and water is got from a pump outside the back door. And the tragic circumstances of Lee's mother, whose dreams were quashed by an aberrant father, and later destroyed by an absent lover. This juxtaposition, the stark contrast between light and dark, has arguably contributed most to the book’s longstanding appeal. To become a subscriber to Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly Magazine, please visit our subscriptions page.They finally get to gorge themselves on the food laid out on the trestle-tables in the schoolhouse and Laurie plays his fiddle accompanied by Eileen on the piano to raucous applause. You can unsubscribe from our list at any point by changing your preferences, or contacting us directly. He subsequent treatment of women is pretty awful too, from describing when he had to go and sleep in his own bed, away from his mother as "my first lesson in the gentle, merciless rejection of women.

But then I spent time rereading it during my recent move from London to Stroud, tracing (in reverse) the journey that Lee himself made on foot as a young man in the 1930s. This is not a fast-paced adventure book but it does create a beautiful picture of quiet country lanes, honeysuckle on the breeze and both the wonders and tragedies of living so far out in a world controlled solely by the forces of nature. Two old ladies, so differing in their characters who despite living as neighbours never once spoke to one another yet whose lives were regulated by each others very presence. What is perhaps most remarkable about it, and has kept it a firm readers’ favorite since it was first published, is the rich lushness of the description. Please note the capital M as we can see in this memorable writing when he always mentions her fondly (rarely found in other memoirs I read), for example: ".She is replaced by Miss Wardley from Birmingham, who "wore sharp glass jewellery" and imposes discipline that is "looser but stronger". Music was by Wilfred Josephs, and Rosemary Leach was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress for her roles as Lee's mother and as Helen in The Mosedale Horseshoe. I love the way he describes simple, everyday things, feelings, smells in a way that instantly makes you feel nostalgic about your childhood, that makes you wish to go out of town and settle in the countryside. The first time I read it, I was quite young and slightly confused as it was the first book I read that was not really chronological, but instead told the story grouped by overlapping themes, such as seasons, school, grannies (not blood ones) and festivals.

Laurie’s father abandoned his wife and children when the war was over, and Laurie grew up in a family dominated by women, chief of whom was his mother, a dreamer of dreams who ‘loved the world and made no plans, had a quick holy eye for natural wonders and couldn’t keep a neat house for her life’.The novel is an account of Lee's childhood in the village of Slad, Gloucestershire, England, in the period soon after the First World War. For some reason I read this after "As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning", which is the follow up to this. For me, his sumptuous imagery and poetic prose ( and the fact that this was an autobiographical memoir, which reads like fiction) drew a comparison with Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals.