H. E. Bates Lydia". His most popular creation was the Larkin family in "The Darling Buds of May". Pop Larkin and his family were inspired by a colourful character 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) turned up to the shop with a huge wad of rubber-banded bank notes and proceeded to spoil his trailer load of children with Easter eggs and ice creams. The television adaptation, produced after his death by his son Richard and based on these stories, was a tremendous success. It
The Triple Echo (novel) The Triple Echo (novel) The Triple Echo is a 1970 novella written by English author H. E. Bates. Set during the early years of World War II the story describes the strange relationship that develops between a young army deserter and a married woman struggling to run a farm alone in the absence of her P.O.W. husband. Bates later said he began working on the story in 1943 but encountered a stumbling block over a character, later removed, and was unable to make any progress with the project until 1968. Although first published in book form in 1970, the complete