Author(s): Laurie Lee

Biography & Memoir

This title comes with an introduction by Michael Morpurgo. Summer was also the time of these: of sudden plenty, of slow hours and actions, of diamond haze and dust on the eyes; of jazzing wasps and dragonflies, haystooks and thistle-seeds, snows of white butterflies, skylark's eggs, bee-orchids, and frantic ants...All this, and the feeling that it would never end, that such days had come forever...All sights twice-brilliant and smells twice-sharp, all game-days twice as long ...we used up the light to its last violet drop, and even then we couldn't go to bed. Cider With Rosie is the best and most vital kind of memoir, rich with colourful, sensuous impressions of life in an English village after the First World War. It overflows with stories and characters made fantastical by the writer's child-perspective, and it draws the reader irresistibly into the lost land of the past. With this beautiful special edition, Vintage Classics celebrates 100 years since the birth of the author, Laurie Lee, and salutes this remarkable, surprising and well-loved classic. It includes fascinating extra material from the Laurie Lee archive at the British Museum about the author's life and the first publication of Cider With Rosie.