Laurie Lee

At the age of 16, Lee left school and joined the audit office of Randle and Pine. He did not like the job and in 1934 he decided to go to London. On the way to London, he worked part-time at street concerts playing the violin. He settled in the southern London suburb of Putney, where he got a job as a bricklayer's assistant.

Lee began writing poetry and they were published in the newspapers The Gloucester Citizen and The Birmingham Post, and in October 1934 he won a poetry competition organized by the national newspaper The Sunday Referee.