Writer, born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, SWC England, UK. He was educated at the village school at Slad, where the family had moved, and worked as a scriptwriter for documentary films during the 1940s. His poetic works included The Sun My Monument (1944) and My Many-Coated Man (1955). His books Cider With Rosie (1959), As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969), and I Can't Stay Long (1975) are widely acclaimed for their evocation of a rural childhood and of life in the many countries he had visited. His last book, A Moment of War (1991), recalls his experiences during the Spanish Civil War.
Laurence Edward Alan Lee (June 26, 1914 – May 13, 1997) was an English poet, novelist, and screenwriter, raised in the village of Slad, Gloucestershire.
Early life and works
His most famous work was an autobiographical trilogy which consisted of Cider with Rosie (1959), As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) and A Moment of War (1991). Whilst the first volume famously deals with his childhood in the idyllic Slad Valley, the second deals with his leaving home for London and his first visit to Spain in 1934, and the third with his return in December 1937 to join the Republican International Brigades.
Other works include I Can't Stay Long (1975), a collection of occasional writing. He also published a number of poems during World War II, and later his memoirs of the Spanish Civil War.
Lee attended Stroud Central School, leaving at fifteen to become an errand boy. These experiences were recounted in the pre Civil War book As I walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) and the book considered by many to be his best work, A Moment of War (1991), an austere memoir of his experience as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War.
During the Second World War, he became a scriptwriter with the GPO Film Unit, working on numerous documentary films for the General Post Office (1939-40), Crown Film Unit (1941-43)and the Ministry of Information (1944-46).
Cider with Rosie continues to be one of the UK's most popular books, and is sometimes used as a set English Literature text for schoolchildren.
Poetry
His first love was always poetry, though he was only moderately successful as a poet.
Other works have included A Rose for Winter, about a trip he made to Andalusia 15 years after the Civil War, and Two Women (1983) was a story of Lee's courtship of his wife Cathy, and the birth and growth of their daughter Jessy.
Other work and awards
Lee also wrote travel books, essays, a radio play, short stories.
Lee provided a great deal of valuable support to the Brotherhood of Ruralists in their attempts to establish themselves in the 1970s, and he continued to do so until his death;
Final years
Laurie Lee returned to Slad to live in his childhood home, with his wife Cathy in the early 1960s and remained until his death on May 14, 1997, at the age of 83.
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