Cider with Rosie

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. 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. With an Afterword by Anna South