Laurie Lee (1914–1997) was an English poet, novelist and screenwriter best known for his autobiographical trilogy chronicling a life shaped by rural England and the tumult of 1930s Spain.
Born Laurence Edward Alan Lee, he grew up in the village of Slad in Gloucestershire, an upbringing he immortalised in Cider with Rosie (1959). The book captures a vanishing rural childhood in the years after the First World War. Its sequel, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969), follows his departure for London and a formative walk through Spain in 1935. The final volume, A Moment of War (1991), recounts his return to Spain in December 1937 to join the Republican International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. Together, the trilogy traces a young man’s passage from village lanes to the front lines of European conflict, blending lyricism with the raw texture of personal witness. Lee’s work remains a touchstone for writers exploring landscape, memory and the impulse to walk into the unknown.
