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
Scott Darling (screenwriter) away from Christie Films with the promise of an opportunity to direct in addition to writing screenplays. While adaptations from other works was Darling's forte, between 1922 and 1928 at Universal he directed 27 silent films and wrote 40 screenplays. With the advent of sound film, he easily adapted to creating dialogue and wrote scripts for early "talkies" such as Fox's "Trent's Last Case" (1929) based on the E. C. Bentley novel and directed by Howard Hawks. Six years after directing his last silent film, Darling tried his hand at directing a sound film in the United Kingdom but was