'The common denomination of seasonal beauty and wonder ties your experience to that of millions who have loved and always will love the country earth.'Fresh, lyrical and full of enchantment, the nature writing of H. E. Bates is alive with the joys of his beloved English countryside, from his hometown in Northamptonshire to the orchards of Kent. Bringing together a rich variety of his previously uncollected essays, Why I Live in the Country is an i...

AS SEEN ON BBC'S BETWEEN THE COVERSThirty years after The Darling Buds of May became one of the most popular comedy-dramas in ITV history, H.E. Bates's novel is back in a brand new adaptation starring Bradley Walsh and Joanna Scanlan'The warmth and affection that H. E. Bates has generated through his books is so uplifting' Bradley Walsh________'Home looks nice. Allus does though,...

Fair Stood the Wind for France, first published in 1944, is author H. E. Bates' fictional account of a downed English bomber-pilot and his crew over occupied France during World War II. The men are taken in by a French family who hide them in their home. However, the pilot, injured during the plane's landing, must remain in France to heal, while his crew begin their journey back to friendly territory. The pilot falls in love with the home-owner's daughter, their relationsh...

The Woman Who Had Imagination, H.E. Bates's fourth volume of stories, first published in 1934 (Jonathan Cape), is a fascinating collection of contrasts. The stories combine elements of realism and poetry, beauty and ugliness, tenderness and irony. Graham Greene, writing in the Spectator, lauded the collection as 'the first volume of Mr. Bates's maturity' and Bates as 'an artist of magnificent originality with a vitality quite unsuspected hitherto'.This is brillian...

Colonel Julian and Other Stories was Bates's first collection following World War II, containing stories he wrote between 1941 and 1951.The title story 'Colonel Julian' sees an eighty-three-year-old veteran of service in India now hosting pilots in his mansion. Here the old generation meets the new. The Colonel is fond of a young pilot, but also bewildered: by his enthusiasm so different from his own business-like relationship with war, by his lack of perspective on his ro...

At thirty-four, H.E. Bates was deemed too old for active service in WWII. But as a successful author, was commissioned by the nascent RAP Public Relations unit to publicise the bravery of the fighter pilots. Bates was posted to Oakington and Tangmere air bases where, over drinks with the pilots, he gathered their stories and wrote them as Flying Officer X.The stories convey the pilots' personal qualities and the forces that motivated them. They blend the action and suspens...

In the 1940s, the wife of a war prisoner lives in desperate loneliness and fear on an isolated farmstead.She encounters a young farmboy completely out of his element as a soldier, and the two carve out a relationship in defiance of the war around them. His decision to escape the military and to dress as his lover's sister to avoid detection eventually leads to tragedy.Originally published in 1970, The Triple Echo was Bates's last significant novell...

Stories about children are not always for children. In The Watercress Girl, H. E. Bates masterfully depicts a childhood which, by proxy, reveals the mystifying world of the adult. Through a series of short, lyrical stories, the complexities of the world are seen with crystalline purity through the eyes of children. We experience the joyous and painful clarity of youth, full of fears, hopes and make-believe, and the trust and mistrust of the adult world.A little boy, charme...

When John Franklin brings his plane down into Occupied France at the height of the Second World war, there are two things in his mind - the safety of his crew and his own badly injured arm. It is a stroke of unbelievable luck when the family of a French farmer risk their lives to offer the airmen protection. During the hot summer weeks that follow, the English officer and the daughter of the house are drawn inexorably to each other...

Bates's famous loveable rogue, Uncle Silas, has a unique range of work to his name. For the first time, all of these stories are gathered together in one collection, allowing readers to experience Silas from multiple perspectives.Some tales offer sly, affectionate glimpses of the narrator's great-uncle Silas – the rural oldster of the earthy, boozy, incorrigible school. But there is also an active tenderness as seen in 'The Revelation,' where the narrator watches old Silas being gi...

In his second collection of novellas, first published in 1957, Bates tackles bitter romantic deceptions and love triangles in what the Times Literary Supplement calls 'Mr Bates at his best.'In 'Night Run to the West' a greedy wife plots the death of her invalid husband, as seen through the eyes of her lover, a civilised truck-driver who has been innocently drawn into her web.'Summer in Salander' involves an inert shipping clerk and an attractive, demanding woman wh...

The Cruise of the Breadwinner is an adventure at sea, following Snowy as he comes of age through a shower of sea-spray and bullets. The youngest crew member on a coastal patrol boat, he longs for action as his sharp eyes pick out distant plane battles and his ears strain to the sound of faint gun-fire. But when finally the war envelops him and his crew-mates in its terrible grasp, he must face the realities of pain, fear, and death. Rescuing two downed pilots, one English and one ...