 One of my favorite front pages, the author Laurie Lee. The photograph was originally taken several years before the famed poet and author's death in 1999. This battered front of the times weekend section was published Oct 9th, 1999. I had been warned before I went to photograph Laurie Lee that he was known to be cantankerous and difficult to handle, so on a beautiful summer day I arrived and asked him where he would like to be photographed. 'You know, nobody has ever asked me that young man' he said wistfully, and advised that he would love to be photographed in his beloved Slad Valley in Gloucestershire. I gathered the author’s fav fold up chair, lined with luxurious purple velvet and led him and his housekeeper to my car. We drove to the top of the valley where we found an unpadlocked gate and I drove Mr. Lee straight into the field where we set up his chair, his housekeeper fretting constantly. Upon finishing the photo shoot he invited me to his local pub for a pint of ale. By this stage his housekeeper was going completely spare. Mr. Lee was treated as a celebrity by all the locals and we whiled away the afternoon discussing his works including 'Cider With Rosie', a book which had been read to me by my sister and a friend imitating west country accents when I was extremely sick with a fever in Kashmir some years previously. Mr. Lee loved the tale of how and where I had read his book and we had a few more pints. By this stage my photo editors were going nuts, 'Where the hell are you?', 'Get back here immediately!' they screamed down the telephone. Needless to say the telephone was promptly switched off and Laurie Lee and I had a fabulous afternoon followed by tea and biscuits at his house - a huge relief to his by then excessively distressed housekeeper! may the great author rest in peace. What a great privilege it was to have met him. |