Having been born in Stroud, Lee's family moved to the village of Slad in 1917, the move with which Cider with Rosie opens. After fighting in the First World War with the Royal West Kent regiment, Lee's father Reg did not return to the family. Lee and his brothers grew up loving their mother's family, the Lights, and intensely disliking the Lee side. At twelve, Laurie went to the Central Boys School in Stroud. In his notebook for 1928, when he was fourteen he lists 'Concert and Dance Appointments', for at this time he was in demand to play his violin at dances. He left the Central School at fifteen to become an errand boy at a Chartered Accountants in Stroud. In 1931 he first found the Whiteway Colony, two miles from Slad, a colony founded by Tolstoy Anarchists. It gave him his first smattering of politicization and was where he met the composer Benjamin Frankel and the 'Cleo' who appears in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. In 1933 he met Sophia Rogers, an "exotically pretty girl with dark curly hair" who had moved to Slad from Buenos Aires, an influence on Lee who said later in life that he only went to Spain because "a girl in Slad from Buenos Aires taught me a few words of Spanish." At twenty he worked as an office clerk and a builder's labourer, and lived in London for a year before leaving for Spain in the summer of 1935. Walking more often than not, he eked out a living by playing his violin. His first encounter with Spain is the subject of As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969).

After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936 Lee was picked up by a British destroyer from Gibraltar, collecting marooned British subjects on the southern Spanish coast. He started to study for an art degree (during these years he met a woman who helped him financially) but returned to Spain in 1937 as an International Brigade volunteer. His service in the Brigade was cut short by his epilepsy. These experiences were recounted in A Moment of War (1991), an austere memoir of his time as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War. According to many biographical sources, Lee fought in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) in the Republican army against Franco's Nationalists. After his death there were claims that Lee's involvement in the war was a fantasy; they were dismissed as "ludicrous" by his widow.

Before devoting himself entirely to writing in 1951, Lee worked as a journalist and as a scriptwriter. During World War II he made documentary films for the General Post Office film unit (1939-40) and the Crown Film Unit (1941-43). From 1944 to 1946 he worked as the Publications Editor for the Ministry of Information. In 1950 Lee married Catherine Francesca Polge, whose father was Provençal and whose mother was one of the Garman sisters; they had one daughter, Jessie. From 1950 to 1951 he was caption-writer-in-chief for the Festival of Britain, for which service he was awarded the decoration of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1952.

Cider with Rosie continues to be one of the UK's most popular books, and is sometimes used as a set English Literature text for schoolchildren. It captured images of village life from a bygone era of innocence and simplicity. With the proceeds Lee was able to buy a cottage in Slad, the village of his childhood.

Lee's first love was always poetry, though he was only moderately successful as a poet. Lee's first poem appeared in The Sunday Referee in 1934. Another poem was published in Cyril Connolly's Horizon in 1940 and his first volume of poems, The Sun My Monument, was launched in 1944. This was followed by The Bloom of Candles (1947) and My Many Coated Man (1955). Several poems written in the early 1940s reflect the atmosphere of the war, but also capture the beauty of the English countryside.

Other works include A Rose for Winter, about a trip he made to Andalusia fifteen years after the Civil War; Two Women (1983), a story of Lee's courtship and marriage with Kathy, daughter of Helen Garman; The Firstborn (1964), about the birth and childhood of their daughter Jessye; I Can't Stay Long (1975), a collection of occasional writing; and The Edge of Day (1960), an autobiography.

Lee also wrote travel books, essays, a radio play, and short stories.

Lee received several awards, including the Atlantic Award (1944), the Society of Authors travelling award (1951), the William Foyle Poetry Prize (1956), and the W.H. Smith and Son Award (1960).

In As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, Lee writes of his stay in a Spanish fishing village which he calls "Castillo." The real town is Almuñécar. In 1988 the citizens of Almuñécar erected a statue in Lee's honor.

In 1993, A Moment of War was chosen as a Notable Book of the Year by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.

Lee provided a great deal of valuable support to the Brotherhood of Ruralists in their attempts to establish themselves in the 1970s, and he continued to do so until his death; his essay Understanding the Ruralists opened the Brotherhood's major 1993 retrospective book. Indeed, it was Lee who is said to have given them the name "Ruralists."

In 2003 the British Library acquired Lee's original manuscripts, letters and diaries. The collection includes two unknown plays and drafts of Cider with Rosie, which reveal that early titles for the book were Cider with Poppy, Cider with Daisy and The Abandoned Shade.

In the 1960s, Laurie Lee and his wife returned to Slad to live near his childhood home, where they remained until his death on May 14, 1997, at age 82. He is buried in the local churchyard.

Books

• Land at War (1945)
• An Obstinate Exile (1951)
• A Rose for Winter: Travels in Andalusia (1955)
• Man Must Move: The Story of Transport (with David Lambert) (1960); published in the U.S. as The Wonderful World of Transportation, (1960) — for children
• The Firstborn (1964)
• I Can't Stay Long (1975)
• Innocence in the Mirror (1978)
• Two Women (1983)

Autobiographical Trilogy

• Cider with Rosie (1959); published in the U.S. as The Edge of Day(1960)
• As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969)
• A Moment of War (1991)

Poetry

• The Sun My Monument (1944)
• The Bloom of Candles: Verse from a Poet's Year (1947)
• My Many-Coated Man (1955)
• Poems (1960)
• Selected Poems (1983)

Recordings

• Laurie Lee Reading His Own Poems (1960)

Plays

• The Voyage of Magellcle for Radio (broadcast 1946; published 1948)
• Peasants' Priest (1947)

Screenplays

• Cyprus Is an Island (1946)
• A Tale in a Teacup (1947)

Radio Play

• The Voyage of Magellan (1946)