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
Fair Stood the Wind for France Fair Stood the Wind for France Fair Stood the Wind for France is a novel written by English author H. E. Bates. The novel was first published in 1944 and was Bates's first financial success. The title comes from the first line of "Agincourt", a poem by Michael Drayton (1563–1631). The story concerns John Franklin, the pilot of a Wellington bomber, who badly injures his arm when he crash-lands the aircraft in German-occupied France during the Second World War. He and his crew make their way to an isolated farmhouse and are taken in by the family of a French