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We
had a rather tight little schoolteacher from Birmingham. When
I say tight I don't mean alcoholic, I mean prim and tightboned and
sharp-eyed and she wore glass jewellery.
What
she did was to open our eyes to details of country life such as
teaching us names of wild flowers and getting us to draw and paint
and learn poetry.
I remember trying to impress her [his schoolteacher] by writing
an essay about the Rocky Mountains and the bears and it was
the first bad review I ever had - shameful!  |
| Laurie
Lee |
Many
of the poems I learned at the village school and the old folk songs
like Down in the Valley, I remember still to this day, but she was
a bit brusque where my writing was concerned.
I
remember trying to impress her by writing an essay about the Rocky
Mountains and the bears and it was the first bad review I ever had
- shameful!
She
went striding round the school saying 'what does he mean by this
highflown bit' and then she'd read out what I thought was a rather
telling phrase.
She
put me back quite a bit but I got over that because when I went
to school in Stroud I used to do all my reading in the public library
on the way home.
The
most startling of all discoveries was the books I found there -
modern writing, Yeats, DH Lawrence, I was going to say Proust but
that would be exaggerating ...
I don't
think we've got Proust there even now, but there was James Joyce
and Huxley and they opened my eyes to modern writing and modern
literature.
>>Laurie
Lee on his early days in Slad
>>Laurie
Lee on Cider With Rosie
>>Laurie
Lee on the Spanish Civil War
>>Laurie
Lee on his favourite place - the Slad Valley
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