Laurie Lee M.B.E.
Born in Stroud, Gloucestershire on 26 June 1914 and educated at Slad Village School and Stroud Central School. He worked for some time in an office in Stroud before travelling in Europe from 1935 to 1939. During the Second World War he made documentary films and travelled as a scriptwriter to Cyprus and India. In 1946 Lee was Publications editor with the Ministry of Information and later a member of Green Park Film Unit. Following his marriage in 1950 to Catherinen Francesca Polge, he became chief caption writer for the Festival of Britain.

Laurie Lee is best known for his evocatively nostalgic prose works than as a poet, but his volumes of poetry, which include The Sun my Monument (1944); The Bloom of Candles (1947); and My Many-Coated Man (1955) show a rich sensuous apprehension of the natural world, as does his best-known work, the widely popular Cider with Rosie (1959), a nostalgic account of his country boyhood in a secluded Cotswold valley.

Lee describes himself as a chance witness of "the end of a thousand years life". His second autobiographical volume As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969), describes his departure from Stroud, his walk to London, and his months in Spain on the eve of the Spanish Civil War. His other works include screenplays, travel books, and an essay on the birth of his daughter, The Firstborn (1964). He now lives in London.

Performed 22 July 1995 at Willow Cottage, Essex