I Can't Stay Long: Laurie Lee

`They are memorials to times and countries whose best is probably past and gone . . . I was lucky to have known them when I did, before darkness began to fall from the air.`

When Laurie Lee first left his country village aged nineteen, he discovered a delight in the outside world that remained undiminished throughout his writing life. This enchanting collection of his `first loves and obsessions` brings together pieces including recollections of his Gloucestershire childhood celebrated in Cider With Rosie; reflections on life, love and death, such as a moving report from the tragic Welsh village of Aberfan; and evocative travel writings on Tuscany, Mexico and the West Indies, amongst others, before they were transformed by mass tourism. Together they capture a world that is lost forever.