Laurie Lee

Speaker 10:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. This is the only extract the BBC has of this episode. The surviving recording did not include the music, so we've recreated the programme, adding the castaways' choices. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than on the original broadcast. The presenter is Roy Plomley. I hope you enjoy listening.

Laurie Lee0:28

I got my job in an office.

Laurie Lee0:30

uh building society office in Stroud.

Laurie Lee0:34

And I was being sort of kicked around, made to make tea and so on. I thought, well, I can't stand it.

Laurie Lee0:39

I must be free.

Laurie Lee0:41

So I do I

Laurie Lee0:43

Wrote a note to the boss and said, I don't think much help to your

Laurie Lee0:47

organization ongoing.

Laurie Lee0:50

So I left Stroud, like many young men before me, and thought, what an obvious place to go is London.

Laurie Lee0:57

I walked to London and I took my violin.

Laurie Lee1:00

'Cause I had an instinct that perhaps with my Vanan I could make enough to live on.

Laurie Lee1:04

And it took me a month to get to London.

Laurie Lee1:07

Because I went along the south coast and I played in Littlehampton, in Worthing, and Brighton and so on. Playing in the street. Playing in the street, uh when the police went there. And I found I was able to make enough to live by, even in those days, the days of the Depression. You took a job when you got to London? When I got to London, uh I got a job as a labourer.

Laurie Lee1:26

I wasn't really very good at laying concrete floors, but I enjoyed it for a year. Then you decided to take to the roads of Spain. Had you any money to set out with? I had saved up about eight quid, and most of that went on the journey to Vigo. I took a ship from Tilbury to Vigo, and I landed with a few shillings and my violin.

Laurie Lee1:51

hoping to live as I had in Little Hampton or Worthing.

Laurie Lee1:55

And strangely enough it worked. I was there for 13 months.

Laurie Lee2:00

What's your second choice?

Speaker 42:02

Halley, holly!

Speaker 42:04

Ba-balinte, bamba-valise!

Speaker 42:16

I

Speaker 42:19

And here is your

Laurie Lee2:22

Am I, that way?

Presenter2:30

Let's have record number three now.

Speaker 42:38

Please don't make them up for now.

Speaker 42:43

Cosopatia sovereign.

Speaker 12:47

We also need

Speaker 42:55

He knows the baby, oh no, finger.

Speaker 43:23

It was the favourite toy of the film.

Presenter3:31

Did you ever go hungry, or or did that violin always work its magic?

Laurie Lee3:36

What was the charm of Spain at that time that they always had, no matter how poor they were, they always had a penny for music. Music was a kind of

Laurie Lee3:45

Credit card, shall we say it? It it admitted you to any circle. It admitted you to a family, admitted you to a wedding, or to just a little group sitting in the shade in the afternoon and there was always a penny or there was some eggs or there was some biscuits or there was a tortilla or there was something. And just you just produced the violin.

Laurie Lee4:06

and because it was a symbol of music,

Laurie Lee4:09

the hard, poverty stricken faces softened and they always find something for you to eat or a place for you to sleep. So I I was hung I was hungry because they were hungry.

Speaker 14:15

Yeah.

Laurie Lee4:20

But I I never stopped.

Laurie Lee4:22

I lived rough.

Laurie Lee4:23

What happened? I mean, what the tragedy of this? It was one of the happiest and perhaps in many ways most satisfying and innocent times of my life.

Speaker 14:27

But

Laurie Lee4:33

But it ended in the national tragedy of the Spanish Civil War, which caught me while I was still there. I didn't know it was coming.

Laurie Lee4:43

And uh at the end of my uh

Laurie Lee4:45

The Spanish War blew up.

Laurie Lee4:47

And that was the end of my time.