Lee, Laurie

Lee, Laurie (1914-1997), English writer and poet. Born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, he left home at 19 and walked to London. There, he worked as a labourer until 1935, when he went to Spain, travelling on foot and subsisting on earnings from playing his violin as a busker. Later, he crossed the Pyrenees during the last days of the Spanish Civil War. Back in London, he worked as a scriptwriter in the Ministry of Information during World War II. A Rose for Winter (1955) describes his travels in Spain. Fame came with Cider with Rosie (1959), his evocation of a country childhood, which was followed by other autobiographical books: As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969), I Can't Stay Long (1975), and A Moment of War (1991). Though they show the influence of Auden and Spender, and, perhaps, Lorca, Lee's poems mainly display him as one of the few inheritors of the English oral tradition. The Sun My Monument (1944), A Bloom of Candles (1947), and My Many Coated Man (1955), all show him to be a bright, charming, and energetic nature-poet, but that is the limit of his range. He also wrote two verse dramas, Peasants' Priest (1947) and The Voyage of Magellan (1948).