SOURCE: A review of As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 224, No. 3, September, 1969, pp. 117-18.

Weeks is an American editor, memoirist, and nonfiction writer long associated with The Atlantic Monthly. In the following mixed review, he relates the events recorded in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning.

Laurie Lee was nineteen when on a June morning in 1935 after a hearty breakfast and a pat on the back from his mother, he walked away from his country home in the Cotswolds. He was propelled by the traditional forces that have sent so many younger sons out into the world, and the Depression had doubtless strengthened his resistance to the local girls, whispering "Marry and settle down." For his journey he carried a small rolled-up tent, a violin wrapped in a blanket, a change of clothes, a tin of treacle biscuits, and a hazel...