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27 Sep 15
19:31
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05 Apr 06
Anyone who studied English Literature in the 1980s will know this story immediately as Cider with Rosie was the set text for a generation of school pupils. Now BBC One presents it as the latest in their season of classic 20th-century literature adaptations. Laurie Lee's autobiographical memoir is an evocative coming-of-age story set in an idyllic Cotswold village during and after the First World War. It follows Young Loll as he experiences first love, loss and family upheaval while growing to manhood in an environment seemingly untouched by the trappings of the modern world. Samantha Morton, Jessica Hynes, Ruby Ashbourne Serkis and June Whitfield star, with Archie Cox as Loll and voiceover from Timothy Spall
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We got that at school in the early 60s Leo.
Apart from the standards like Treasure Island and Robin Hood this was my first read.
Apart from the standards like Treasure Island and Robin Hood this was my first read.
Yep, I think we had it school also.
Don't think they would all have scarves.
Don't think they would all have scarves.
The book was beautifully written and because of this it was easy to visualise every scene.
I went to visit the village of Slad after I had read it. I'm sad like that 
one of the few books that i was made to read at school that i enjoyed, this is carp thou. the bbc have lost the knack lately.
About 50 years since I read it but it still sticks vividly in my mind.
Ruby Ashbourne Serkis, playing Rosie,.....daughter of Andy (Gollum) Serkis
after years of reading Enid Blyton this was probably the first book I related to.
Anyone on here got a daughter? This might ring a bell
FIRSTBORN - by Laurie Lee 1963
(an extract, slightly abridged)
She was born in the autumn and was a late fall in my life, and lay purple and dented like a little bruised plum, as though she'd been lightly trodden in the grass and forgotten. Then the nurse lifted her up and she came suddenly alive, her bent legs kicking crabwise, and her first living gesture was a thin wringing of the hands accompanied by a far-out Hebridean lament.
This moment of meeting seemed to be a birth-time for both of us; her first and my second life. Nothing, I knew, would be the same again, and I think I was reasonably shaken. I peered intently at her, looking for familiar signs, but she was convulsed as an Aztec idol. Was this really my daughter, this purple concentration of anguish, this blind and protesting dwarf?
Then they handed her to me, stiff and howling, and I held her for the first time and kissed her, and she went still and quiet as though by instinctive guile, and I was instantly enslaved by her flattery of my powers.
Only a few brief weeks have passed since that day, but with each day of survival she has grown younger and fatter, her face filling, drawing on life. Now this girl, my child, this parcel of will and warmth, fills the cottage with her obsessive purpose. The rhythmic tides of her sleeping and feeding spaciously measure the days and nights. Her frail self-absorption is a commanding presence, her helplessness strong as a rock, so that I find myself listening even to her silences as though some great engine was purring upstairs.
She is of course just an ordinary miracle, but is also the particular late wonder of my life. So each night I take her to bed like a book and lie close and study her. Her dark blue eyes stare straight into mine, but off-centre, not seeing me.
Here she is then, my daughter, here, alive, the one I must possess and guard. A year ago this space was empty, not even a hope of her was in it. Now she's here, brand new, with our name upon her; and no one will call in the night to reclaim her. She is here for good - or is she? I succumb to the jitters or new-parenthood-shakes "she's so quiet, do you think she's dead?" As it is, my daughter is so new to me still that I can't yet leave her alone. I have to keep on digging her out of her sleep to make sure that she's really alive.
It is little more than a month since I was handed this living heap of expectations, and I can feel nothing but simple awe.
Beautiful bit of writing, and worthy of recitation at any appropriate christening or whatever.
FIRSTBORN - by Laurie Lee 1963
(an extract, slightly abridged)
She was born in the autumn and was a late fall in my life, and lay purple and dented like a little bruised plum, as though she'd been lightly trodden in the grass and forgotten. Then the nurse lifted her up and she came suddenly alive, her bent legs kicking crabwise, and her first living gesture was a thin wringing of the hands accompanied by a far-out Hebridean lament.
This moment of meeting seemed to be a birth-time for both of us; her first and my second life. Nothing, I knew, would be the same again, and I think I was reasonably shaken. I peered intently at her, looking for familiar signs, but she was convulsed as an Aztec idol. Was this really my daughter, this purple concentration of anguish, this blind and protesting dwarf?
Then they handed her to me, stiff and howling, and I held her for the first time and kissed her, and she went still and quiet as though by instinctive guile, and I was instantly enslaved by her flattery of my powers.
Only a few brief weeks have passed since that day, but with each day of survival she has grown younger and fatter, her face filling, drawing on life. Now this girl, my child, this parcel of will and warmth, fills the cottage with her obsessive purpose. The rhythmic tides of her sleeping and feeding spaciously measure the days and nights. Her frail self-absorption is a commanding presence, her helplessness strong as a rock, so that I find myself listening even to her silences as though some great engine was purring upstairs.
She is of course just an ordinary miracle, but is also the particular late wonder of my life. So each night I take her to bed like a book and lie close and study her. Her dark blue eyes stare straight into mine, but off-centre, not seeing me.
Here she is then, my daughter, here, alive, the one I must possess and guard. A year ago this space was empty, not even a hope of her was in it. Now she's here, brand new, with our name upon her; and no one will call in the night to reclaim her. She is here for good - or is she? I succumb to the jitters or new-parenthood-shakes "she's so quiet, do you think she's dead?" As it is, my daughter is so new to me still that I can't yet leave her alone. I have to keep on digging her out of her sleep to make sure that she's really alive.
It is little more than a month since I was handed this living heap of expectations, and I can feel nothing but simple awe.
Beautiful bit of writing, and worthy of recitation at any appropriate christening or whatever.
Some thirty years ago I decided that the New Year's binge and its ramifications were not for me. So , I locked the doors , put my feet up and read "Cider With Rosie" for the first time. Since then I have never ventured out on a New Year's Eve. It is a smashing book.
Smashing book not suitable for tv drama especially when that drama relies on a narrator reading the book......sort of admits it cant be done
Dobbo - I do not agree. This book has imo proved eminently suitable for tv and amateur drama, with and without narration (TV has done LL himself and now Timothy Spall) and it has been done loads of times without narration.
For whats its worth, I loved tonight, despite the deserter love angle deviation, and others. The Granny Wallon and Trill death bit was beautifully done (better than the book
For whats its worth, I loved tonight, despite the deserter love angle deviation, and others. The Granny Wallon and Trill death bit was beautifully done (better than the book
black
don't know if u wrote that but so true
I thick as shoite
but My girl 4th year medicine student
time goes so quick
don't know if u wrote that but so true
I thick as shoite
but My girl 4th year medicine student
time goes so quick
Capt F
The words are Laurie Lee's own on the event of his first born daughter....
I am sure you agree that as a father of a daughter (or daughters) he nails it absolutely.
The words are Laurie Lee's own on the event of his first born daughter....
I am sure you agree that as a father of a daughter (or daughters) he nails it absolutely.
I Read this book in the 70`s (along with 2 others) and got a top grade in English Literature,
This drama last night did not explain;
Public Death, Private Murder, describes the murder of a villager made good who returns from New Zealand to visit his family, boasts about his wealth and flaunts it in the local pub.
The police try to find his attackers but are met by a wall of silence, and the case is never closed.
"quiet incest flourished where the roads were bad", and states that the village neither approved nor disapproved, but neither did it complain to authority.
Lee is seduced by Rosie Burdock underneath a haywagon after drinking cider from a flagon,
The identity of Rosie was revealed years later to be Lee's distant cousin Rosalind Buckland.
This drama last night did not explain;
Public Death, Private Murder, describes the murder of a villager made good who returns from New Zealand to visit his family, boasts about his wealth and flaunts it in the local pub.
The police try to find his attackers but are met by a wall of silence, and the case is never closed.
"quiet incest flourished where the roads were bad", and states that the village neither approved nor disapproved, but neither did it complain to authority.
Lee is seduced by Rosie Burdock underneath a haywagon after drinking cider from a flagon,
The identity of Rosie was revealed years later to be Lee's distant cousin Rosalind Buckland.
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