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Laurie Lee came
to live in Slad, near Stroud, at the age of three. He went to the village school
and later to Stroud Central School before leaving Gloucestershire for Europe in
1935. He came back to Slad to live with his wife Cathy in the early 1960s and
remained until his death in 1997. His memories of his childhood in Slad before
the arrival of the motorcar are vividly recorded in his most famous work, the
autobiographical Cider with Rosie.
Primarily a
poet, Laurie Lee published four volumes of poetry including The Sun My Monument
(1944), and A Bloom of Candles (1947) before writing Cider with Rosie. Although
his poetry has received critical acclaim and remains his first love, it is his
prose works which have brought him the recognition of a wider audience.
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, about his experiences in Spain before the
Civil War, followed 10 years after Cider with Rosie, and his last published
work, A Monument of War, considered by many to be his best book, completed the
trilogy in 1991. Other works have included A Rose for Winter, about a trip he
made to Andalusia 15 years after the Civil War, and numerous contributions to
journals and magazines.
During the war he worked for the Ministry of Information and from 1950-51 was
Caption-Writer-In-Chief and Curator of Eccentricities for the Festival of
Britain. He was awarded the MBE in 1952. Laurie Lee died in 1997 aged 83.
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