Cider with Rosie: a Boyhood in the West of England, Laurie Lee (Vintage Classics, 2002; and previous editions)
In Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee recalls his childhood in the Gloucestershire village of Slad and the surrounding countryside following World War I. A best seller when it was first published in England in 1959, Cider with Rosie continues to charm readers and, perhaps, to inspire a journey to Lee's Slad Valley.
“That was the day we came to the village, in the summer of the last year of the First World War. To a cottage that stood in a half-acre of garden on a steep bank above a lake, a cottage with three floors and a cellar and a treasure in the walls, with a pump and apple trees, syringa and strawberries, rooks in the chimneys, frogs in the cellar, mushrooms on the ceiling, and all for three and sixpence a week.” – from Cider with Rosie, by Laurie Lee