H.E.Bates, author of "The Darling Buds of May"
Herbert Ernest
Bates, known to family and friends alike simply as H.E., was born in the
Northampton leather town of Rushden in 1905 and brought up in "an
atmosphere of intense respectability".
After an unhappy period at
Kettering Grammar School, H.E. earned the princely sum of ten schillings a
week as a junior assistant reporter with the Northampton Chronicle - a job
he grew to dislike intensely.
Later, as a warehouse clerk, he
spent most of his days and nights writing novels, short stories and even
plays. His first novel was published when he was just 21.
 He married in 1931, with the publication of his fourth novel,
and he and his wife Madge moved to the beautiful Kent village of Little
Chart, which is still the family home.
During the Second World
War, H.E. Bates was recruited by the RAF as a short story writer and
produced many tales of service life, often written under the pseudonym of
"Flying Officer X".
Two of his most famous works were published
after the War - "Fair Stood The Wind For France" (1944) and "Love For
Lydia" (1952).
Then in 1958, came the best-selling book "The
Darling Buds of May", the first in what was to become a series of five
novels centred on a larger-than-life rustic Kent family.
The
Larkin family had arrived!
Books by H.E. Bates
Achilles and the
Twins
An Aspidystra in Babylon
My Beauty and the Dead
Blossoming Wind (Autobiog vol. 2)
A Breath of French Air
Catherine Foster
Charlotte's Row
Colonel Julian
The
Country Heart
The Country of White Clown
County Tales
A Crown
of Wild Myrtle
Cut and Come Again
 Daffodil Sky
The Darling Buds of May
The Distant Horns
of Summer
Down the River
Dulcima
Elephant's Nest in a Rhubarb
Tree & Other Stories
English Countryside
The Fabulous Mrs V
The Face of England
Fair Stood the Wind for France
The Fallow
Land
The Feast of July
Flying Bombs over England
The Flying
Goat
The Four Beauties
Lovely Rose
Golden Oriole
The
Grapes of Paradise
The Happy Countryman
The House of Women
In
the Heart of the Country
The Jacaranda Tree
A Little of What You
Fancy
Love for Lydia
Moment in Time
A Month by the Lake and
Other Stories
My Uncle Silas
The Nature of Love
Now Sleeps the
Crimson Petal
O More than Happy Countryman
Oh! to be in England
Party for the Girls: Six Stories
The Purple Plain
The Scarlet
Sword
Seven Tales
The Sleepless Moon
Song of the Wren
Spella Ho
The Stories of Flying Officer 'X'
Sugar for the
House
Triple Echo
The Two Sisters
The Vanished World (Autobiog
vol. 1)
The Watercress Girl
Wedding Party
When the Green Woods
Laugh
The White Admiral
Wild Cherry Tree
Woman who had
Imagination
The Yellow Heads of Asphodel
World in Ripeness
(Autobiog vol. 3)
Through the Woods
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