"Cider with Rosie" is the first part of the poet Laurie Lee's (1914-1997) autobiographical trilogy. It describes his life in the Gloucestershire village of Slad from his earliest years until he was twenty. He tells of thin winters, fat summers, local legends and ghosts, of neighbours and relations, and of growing up against a half-pagan landscape in which violence and madness, country follies and feasts were all part of one pastoral mess-pot.
Reviews
"One of the great writers of the twentieth century." --"Independent ""An enchanting book, an exquisite farewell, not only to childhood, and boyhood, but also to an England that has vanished." --JB Priestly "Remains as fresh and full of joy and gratitude for youth and its sensations as when it first appeared. It sings in the memory" --"Sunday Times" "It has got... a marvellous morning freshness...There is hardly a sentence in it that does not set the sense of touch and smell, as well as sight and hearing, tingling" --"Daily Mail" "He had a nightingale inside him, a capacity for sensuous, lyrical precision" --"Guardian" "Lee was a poet whose deft passage into prose carried with it much of the rhythm and accuracy of the poet's language" --Mignon Khargie, Art Director of Salon
Author description
John Ward (1917-2007) was born in Hereford and was a noted book illustrator who gave the Prince of Wales his first professional lessons in painting.
