She takes a job as his housekeeper and looks after his four children from a previous marriage. She works as a maid for much of her youth before meeting Lee’s father. Lee remembers his mother, Annie, very fondly. Even all these years later, Lee still remembers the scene vividly. Eventually, he’s taken away by other soldiers and charged with desertion. He also uses the fire area to dry out damp clothes from the night before. The man arrives in the morning for food, which is just another mouth for Lee’s mother to feed. It’s around this time that a man in uniform comes to visit. It’s outdated and rickety-for example, they only have a tiny woodfire for cooking. He and his family move into a cottage in Slad and his mother struggles to keep the place in order. One of Lee’s earliest memories is around the time of World War I.

He doesn’t want the responsibility of looking after so many children. He goes to stay in London and works for the Civil Service. He grows up with his siblings and his mother, because his father abandons the family when they’re all still young. Born in 1914, Lee recalls growing up after the First World War and the impact it has on ordinary families trying to put their lives back together. Lee grew up in Slad, which is a small village in Gloucestershire, England. Lee was an award-winning English writer who later received an MBE. Cider with Rosie is the first in Lee’s The Autobiographical Trilogy. It was later revealed that Rosie is Rose Buckland, Lee’s cousin by marriage-they kept her identity a secret for over 25 years. Published in 1959 by Hogarth Press, it centres around Lee’s upbringing in the English Cotswolds and how his mother struggles to raise a large family on her own. Cider with Rosie is a memoir by Laurence Edward Alan Lee, or “Laurie” Lee.

Cider with rosie story