H. E. Bates

Career

Typically, Bates' best-known works are set in the English countryside, particularly the Midlands including his native Northamptonshire and the 'Garden of England', Kent, the setting for The Darling Buds of May. Bates was partial to taking long walks around the Northamptonshire countryside, which often provided the inspiration for his stories. His love for the countryside is exemplified in two volumes of essays, Through the Woods and Down the River. Both have been reprinted numerous times. Several of Bates's works, such The Bride Comes to Evensford and Love for Lydia, are set in the fictional town of Evensford, which is based on Bates's hometown Rushden in Northamptonshire.

Bates discarded his first novel, written when he was in his late teenage years, but his second, and the first to be published, The Two Sisters, was inspired by one of his midnight walks, which took him to the small village of Farndish. There, late at night, he saw a light burning in a cottage window and it was this that triggered the story. He was working briefly for the local newspaper in Wellingborough, a job which he hated, and then later at a local shoe-making warehouse, where he had time to write; in fact the whole of this first novel was written there. This was sent to, and rejected by, eight or nine publishers until Jonathan Cape accepted it on the advice of its respected Reader, Edward Garnett. Bates was then twenty years old. More novels, collections of short stories, essays, and articles followed, but did not pay well.

World War II short stories

During World War II, he was commissioned into the Royal Air Force solely to write short stories. The Air Ministry realised that it might create more favorable public sentiment by emphasizing stories about the people fighting the war, rather than facts. The stories were published originally in the News Chronicle with the pseudonym "Flying Officer X". Later they were published in book form as The Greatest People in the World and Other Stories and How Sleep the Brave and Other Stories. His first financial success was Fair Stood the Wind for France. After a posting to the Far East, this was followed by two novels about Burma, The Purple Plain in 1947 and The Jacaranda Tree (published in 1949), and one set in India, The Scarlet Sword (published in 1950).

He was also commissioned by the Air Ministry to write The Battle of the Flying Bomb, but because of various disagreements within the government, it was cancelled, and then publication was banned for 30 years. It was discovered by Bob Ogley and published during 1994 with the title Flying Bombs over England. Another commission which has still to be published is Night Interception Battle concerning the difficulty of tracking enemy aircraft at night.

Post-war work

Other novels followed after the war; he averaged about one novel and a collection of short stories a year, which was considered very productive at the time. These included The Feast of July and Love for Lydia. His most popular creation was the Larkin family in The Darling Buds of May. Pop Larkin and his family were inspired by a person seen in a local shop in Kent by Bates and his family when on holiday. The man (probably Wiltshire trader William Dell, also on holiday) had a huge wad of rubber-banded bank notes and proceeded to treat his trailer load of children with Easter eggs and ice creams. Other characters were modelled on friends and acquaintances of Bates, such as Iris Snow (a parody of Iris Murdoch) and the Brigadier who was modelled on the father of John Bayley, Murdoch's husband.

The television adaptation, produced after his death by his son Richard and based on these stories, was a tremendous success. It is also the source of the American movie The Mating Game. The My Uncle Silas stories were also made into a UK television series from 2000 to 2003. Many other stories were adapted to TV and others to movies, the most renowned being The Purple Plain in 1954 and The Triple Echo; Bates also worked on other movie scripts. In 2020 ITV commissioned a new television series of The Darling Buds of May, with the title The Larkins starring Bradley Walsh, Joanna Scanlan, Sabrina Bartlett and Tok Stephen. The first episode aired in October 2021.

Personal life

In 1931, he married Madge Cox, who lived two streets away from him in his native Rushden. They moved to the village of Little Chart in Kent and bought an old granary and this together with an acre of garden they converted into a home. Bates was a keen and knowledgeable gardener who wrote many books on flowers. The Granary remained their home for the whole of their married life.

They had two sons and two daughters: Ann, Judith, Richard and Jonathan. Jonathan Bates was nominated for an Academy Award for his sound work on the 1982 movie Gandhi. Richard became a television producer, Bates's granddaughter, Victoria Wicks is an actress and script consultant.

Death and honours

Bates died on 29 January 1974 in Canterbury, Kent, aged 68. A prolific and successful author, his greatest success was posthumous, with the television adaptations of his stories The Darling Buds of May and its sequels as well as adaptations of My Uncle Silas, A Moment in Time, Fair Stood the Wind for France and Love for Lydia. In his home town of Rushden, H.E. Bates has a road named after him to the west of the town, leading to the local leisure centre. His archive is held at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. After Bates' death Madge moved to a bungalow, which had originally been a cow byre, next to the Granary. She died in 2004 at the age of 95.

References to H.E. Bates

• Bates's novel Love for Lydia served as an inspiration for Donna Lewis's 1996 smash hit "I Love You Always Forever".
• Literary study of his works: Dennis Vannatta, H.E. Bates (Twayne's English Authors Series). Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1983. ISBN 0-8057-6844-0
• Bates' idyllic depiction of rural Britain is referred to by the character 'I' in cult British comedy Withnail & I
• His short story 'The Mill' featured as the extract in the first paper of the AQA English Language GCSE in 2019.