The Illustrated Cider with Rosie - Laurie Lee

Bracken Books, 1987, hardcover, A4 format, illustrated, 224 pages, pictorial boards, very slight edgewear to dust jacket, jacket protector, otherwise overall condition: as new.

"A quick shufty through its  pages reminded me what a terrific writer Lee was, with indelible characters such as Cabbage Stump Charlie and Harelip Harry.
For me, his sumptuous imagery and poetic prose (and the fact that this was an autobiographical memoir, which reads like fiction) drew a comparison with Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals. - though herein lies a Steinbeck-esque darkness.

The story harks back to the rural hardship of an English village shortly after the Great War, long before such villages were served by gastropubs, delicatessens, or even motor cars.
(Were it written today, I venture it might be titled Drinking Cider With Rosie Behind Tesco Express).

Rediscovering Laurie Lee's beautiful wordplay made me initially think that his prose was wasted on a boy who could clearly imagine a clean-shaven Tarzan swinging from vines through the jungle. But perhaps my evidential nostalgia confirmed otherwise."