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JOHN GIELGUD
Actor
Talking about playing the classics, including Hamlet
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JUDI DENCH
Actor
Reflects on childhood and deciding to be an actress |
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Laurie Lee 1914 - 1997
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Laurie Lee was born in the village of Slad, near Stroud, Gloucestershire. Abandoned by his father when he was 3, Lee was educated at the local village school and at Stroud, leaving when he was 15. In 1934, he went to London to seek his fortune and then continued on to Spain. There he travelled on foot, playing his fiddle to earn his keep, before being caught up later in the Spanish Civil War. These youthful adventures provided the material for his celebrated autobiographical trilogy, Cider with Rosie (1959), As I walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) and A Moment of War (1991). Returning to London, he worked for the Ministry of Information during World War 2 and published a collection of poems, The Sun My Monument, in 1944. This was followed by The Bloom of Candles (1947) and My Many-Coated Man (1955). Lee's poems are generally about the English countryside and proved only reasonably successful. Cider with Rosie, on the other hand, was an immediate best-seller, reaching a wide public with its images of village life from a bygone era of innocence and simplicity. Its success was such that Lee could buy his childhood home, where he died. He was buried in the local churchyard. The identity of Rosie, the eponymous heroine of Lee's memoir, remained a secret for 25 years after publication of the book. It was then revealed that she was Lee's cousin by marriage, Rose Buckland.
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KEY WORKS INCLUDE:
My Many-Coated Man (1955)
Cider with Rosie (1959)
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969)
A Moment of War (1991)
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