Lives and Loves of Laurie Lee

Laurie Lee was a towering figure in twentieth century British literature, seeming to bridge a gap between the Victorian and the post-war experience; the pastoral and the urbane. Millions of readers read and loved the lyrical account of his Gloucestershire boyhood, immortalised in Cider with Rosie. They also thrilled to the travels of the young Lee through Spain, playing the fiddle before being caught up in the Spanish Civil War. When he returned home, he spent almost the rest of his life writing about these youthful adventures. He was a poet, a playwright and a broadcaster, his books became classics, and he was devoted to two women: his wife and his daughter, "the firstborn". Publicly, he fostered the Laurie Lee legend. But behind his locked study door, in the letters and diaries he left, lay the revealing clues to his private pain and passion: the girls he left behind, the woman who took him to Spain, the woman he came back to...and the others who nurtured, protected and loved him all his crowded, fulfilled but often tormented life. In this extraordinary volume, largely updated from her classic Laurie Lee: The Well-Loved Stranger, and released to mark the centenary of Lee's birth, Valerie Grove finds in Lee's private correspondence hitherto unknown elements in the Laurie Lee story - which are even more fascinating than the legends he fostered.