17 Facts About Laurie Lee

Laurie Lee's sister, Frances, died in 1915 aged three when Lee was a toddler.

Laurie Lee had two full brothers, Jack and Tony, and five older half-siblings from his father's first marriage.

At 12, Laurie Lee went to the Central Boys' School in Stroud.

Laurie Lee left the Central School at 15 to become an errand boy at a Chartered Accountants in Stroud.

At 20 Laurie Lee worked as an office clerk and a builder's labourer, and lived in London for a year before leaving for Vigo, in northwest Spain, in the summer of 1935.

Laurie Lee started to study for an art degree but returned to Spain in 1937 as an International Brigade volunteer.

Laurie Lee met Mary Garman's married sister, Lorna Wishart, in Cornwall in 1937, and they had an affair lasting until she left him for Lucian Freud in 1943.

In 1950 Laurie Lee married Catherine Francesca Polge, whose father was Provencal and whose mother was another of the Garman sisters, Helen; they had one daughter, Jessie.

The success of the autobiographical novel Cider with Rosie in 1959 allowed Laurie Lee to become a full-time independent writer.

Laurie Lee said that the creation of the book took him two years, and that it was written three times.

Laurie Lee's poems had appeared in the Gloucester Citizen and the Birmingham Post, and in October 1934 his poem 'Life' won a prize from, and publication in, the Sunday Referee, a national paper.

Laurie Lee wrote travel books, essays, radio plays and short stories.

Laurie Lee wrote for British Transport Films 'Journey into Spring'.

Laurie Lee provided a great deal of valuable support to the Brotherhood of Ruralists in their attempts to establish themselves in the 1970s, and he continued to do so until his death; his essay Understanding the Ruralists opened the Brotherhood's major 1993 retrospective book.

Lee revealed on the BBC1 Wogan show in 1985 that he was frequently asked by children visiting Slad as part of their O-Level study of Cider with Rosie "where Laurie Lee was buried", assuming that the author was dead.

An archive recording of Laurie Lee's voice was used for the narration of the Carlton Television film Cider with Rosie, which was first broadcast after his death.

Laurie Lee died of bowel cancer at home in Slad on 13 May 1997, at the age of 82.