I Can’t Stay Long

“Autobiographical, intimate and often wistful, I Can’t Stay Long is the essential Laurie Lee.

In this ‘scrap book of first loves and obsessions’ the author takes us from the slow rhythms of the small Gloucestershire village of the home to the foggy isolation of London, from the convivial Spain documented in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning tot the Sugar Islands of the Caribbean. The writings convey a sense of nostalgia for a lost rural world, provide reminiscences of the sun-drenched cities of Tuscany and Jamaica and reflect on several topics of universal concern, including love, desire and the nature of paradise.

Laurie Lee’s powers of observation and evocation never flag, and the pieces in this book will delight and surprise generations of readers to come.”