Eccentricity

As part of the Laurie Lee centenary celebrations, Stroud’s Museum in the Park explored a rather less well known facet of the author’s character… Before writing Cider with Rosie, Lee was employed as a civil servant, working on the 1951 Festival of Britain, initially to produce captions for publications and displays but, seeing a gap in the modernist slant of the show whilst chiming in with the Festival’s twin aim of reflecting life in Britain, he became the Festival’s official ‘Curator of Eccentricities’. Putting out an open call for fabulous inventions and wonderful curiousities, he was responsible for a display of machines and objects - items such as a machine for grinding smoke, a deflating bus for low bridges and motorcycle goggles with wiper blades not to mention the almost de rigeur mandolin made from matchsticks...