Collected Poems

PRAISE FOR DOWN IN THE VALLEY: It is a fine thing to revisit this writer’s landscape and hear his amiable voice in it again. * Times Literary Supplement *A beautiful illustration of how, in some way, we are all indelibly influenced by the landscape of our childhood. – Raynor Winn, author of The Salt Path

Laurie Lee has written some of the best-loved travel books in the English language. Born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, in 1914, he was educated at Slad village school and Stroud Central School. At the age of nineteen he walked to London and then travelled on foot through Spain, where he was trapped by the outbreak of the Civil War. He later returned by crossing the Pyrenees, as he recounted in A Moment of War.

Laurie Lee published four collections of poems- The Sun My Monument (1944), The Bloom of Candles (1947), My Many-Coated Man (1955) and Pocket Poets (1960). His other works include The Voyage of Magellan (1948), The Firstborn (1964), I Can’t Stay Long (1975), and Two Women (1983). He also wrote three bestselling volumes of autobiography- Cider with Rosie (1959), which has sold over six million copies worldwide, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) and A Moment of War (1991).