One of the many pleasures of watching The Trip to Spain – the latest in the series of road pictures starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon – is hearing a reference to Laurie Lee’s As I Walked out One Midsummer Morning. (I can’t remember ever hearing mention of a travel classic, other than On the Road, in an American movie.) And the book – one of the most beautifully titled in the history of travel literature – is not only referred to, it is discussed, with a young English busker who, of course, knows it well. Ah, England. Perhaps it was concern about alienating American audiences that kept the writers from bringing in V.S. Pritchett (Marching Spain) and Gerald Brenan (South from Granada).
