Most of us have heard of Cider with Rosie, the first of Laurie Lee’s autobiographical novels about his early life in the lush beauty of the Gloucestershire countryside. Lee is rightly famous for this engaging work but his passion was always for poetry which shows the great gift for sensuous detail and intense lyricism that made Cider with Rosie so popular.

But life for Lee was not always easy and although to the end he continued to write essays, travel books, radio plays and short stories, he was only moderately successful as a poet and has tended to suffer from critical neglect.

“Lee had a nightingale in him,” said his obituary in The Guardian. In our study day, we’ll explore some of the writer’s poetry and prose and try to determine if there is more to his work than a profound nostalgia for the English countryside.