‘. . . wild green damsons, tiny plums, black sloes, pink crab-apples – the free waste of the woods, an unpoliced bounty, which we’d carry back home in bucketfuls.’
Greetings from Hoxton Square, where, with the new Autumn issue of Slightly Foxed and limited edition of First Light hot off the press, keen-eyed readers might have also noticed the release of our latest addition to the Plain Foxed Editions list.
Laurie Lee | CIDER WITH ROSIE
Laurie Lee described this, his best-loved and best-known book, as ‘a recollection of early boyhood’, adding the acknowledgement that ‘some facts may have been distorted by time’. Whether or not they have, as one critic put it, ‘Cider with Rosie seems true as long as you’re reading it – and that’s the most important thing.’
In the years during and after the First World War a village like Slad, deep in its remote Cotswold valley, was a small self-contained world. Despite the poverty, for Laurie the hugger-mugger home and the village with its familiar characters and its unchanging round were full of wonder. He writes ecstatically of going blackberrying in summer, playing in the fields when the grass was ‘June high’, skating and carol singing in icy Christmas weather when it hurt to breathe and the air was ‘like needles’. Yet village life could be brutal, and he acknowledges its bitter side too, the grief and violence, the neighbours destined for the workhouse. Illustrated by John Ward, Cider with Rosie is not just a rosy picture of a rural past, but a magical evocation of growing up in a lost world that rings emotionally true.
Read on below for an extract from Kate Young’s article about the book, as featured in Issue 68 of Slightly Foxed, together with a link to read the full piece on our website.
With best wishes, as ever, from the SF staff
Isabel, Rebecca, Ruth, Edie & Jennie
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