Lee, Laurie

(British, 1914–96)

Gloucestershire born, and educated locally, Lee is best known for his autobiographical writing, although he also wrote poetry, screenplays, and travel books. Start with Cider with Rosie (1959), his most popular work, a rich, lyrical evocation of his childhood after the First World War. In sensuous detail he conjures this secluded Cotswold valley and a lost world. Movingly, often with gentle humour, he tells of village life, local characters and legends, schooldays, madness, and violence. The memoir culminates in his sexual encounter with Rosie Burdock under the hay-wagon, drinking cider—that first ‘secret drink of golden fire … Never to be forgotten, or ever tasted again’. Move on to As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969), Lee's experiences as a young man en route to London, Spain, the Mediterranean; and A Moment of War (1991), his recollections of the Spanish Civil War.

Flora Thompson, J. D. Salinger  GC