A Thousand Laurie Lees

‘As a writer he was the disengaged onlooker who understood how his presence altered a place or a situation.’ This is how The Independent described Laurie Lee in their 1997 obituary of the much-loved author. In A Thousand Laurie Lees, another poet, Adam Horovitz, explores not only how the Slad Valley informed the man and his writing but also how the valley itself was affected by its association with such an international figure; and how it has retained its particular identity since its description in Cider with Rosie. Shortly after Laurie Lee’s death in 1997, a handful of locals dressed up as Lee and cycled right through the heart of Cider with Rosie country, stopping off at all the pubs on the way. They called their journey ‘The Night of a thousand Laurie Lees’. Slad valley man Horovitz draws on memoir, myth and literature inspired by the valley and his walks through the Slad landscape, charting what has changed and what remains, from badger setts to ‘Notting Hill in Wellies,’ to celebrate the man and the landscape that made him.