Laurie Lee
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Laurence Edward Alan Lee (June 26, 1914 – May 13, 1997) was an English poet, novelist, and screenwriter, raised in the village of Slad, Gloucestershire.
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[edit] 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. At twenty he worked as an office clerk and a builder's labourer, and lived in London for a year before spending four years travelling around Spain and the Mediterranean. Walking more often than not, he eked out a living by playing his violin. He started to study for an art degree, but returned to Spain in 1937 as an International Brigade volunteer. His service in the Spanish Civil War was cut short by his physical shortcomings (he suffered from epilepsy). 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). During the war he was also employed by the Ministry of Information. From 1944 to 1946 he edited publications at the Ministry of Information. From 1950 to 1951 he was involved with the Festival of Britain, for which he was awarded the MBE in 1952.
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. It captured images of village life from a bygone era of innocence and simplicity. With the proceeds Lee could buy his childhood home in Slad.
[edit] Poetry
His first love was always poetry, though he was only moderately successful as a poet. Lee's first poem appeared in Horizon in 1940 and he published his first volume of poems, The Sun My Monument in 1944. This was followed by The Bloom of Candles (1947) and My Many Coated Man (1955). Several poems written in the early 1940s reflect the atmosphere of the war, but also capture the beauty of the English countryside.
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.
[edit] Other work and awards
Lee also wrote travel books, essays, a radio play, short stories. He received several awards, including the Atlantic Award (1944), Society of Authors travelling award (1951), M.B.E. (Member, Order of the British Empire), William Foyle Poetry Prize (1956), W.H. Smith and Son Award (1960).
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; his essay "Understanding the Ruralists" opened the Brotherhood's major 1993 retrospective book. Indeed, it was Lee who is said to have given them the name of 'Ruralists' (ref.).
[edit] 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. He is buried in the local churchyard
