Lee , Laurence Edward Alan , 1914-1997 , writer x Lee , Laurie

Laurence Edward Alan [Laurie] Lee was born and educated in Gloucestershire. He lived in London and Spain as a young man, working in a variety of jobs, and fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. During the Second World War he worked as a film scriptwriter for the Ministry of Information. Lee's first volume of poetry was published in 1944 and he subsequently wrote a variety of fiction and non-fiction works. He is best known, however, for Cider with Rosie (1959), the first of his three volumes of autobiography. He received the MBE in 1952 and was made a freeman of the City of London in 1982.