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 Two Sisters (novel) The Two Sisters (novel) The Two Sisters was the first novel published by English author H. E. Bates in 1926. It was his first novel, though he had published a one-act play "The Last Bread" earlier that year.The book was inspired by one of his midnight walks, which took him to the small village of Farndish in Bedfordshire. There, late at night, he saw a light burning in a cottage window and it was this that triggered the story. It was written when Bates was only 19 living in Rushden and working as a warehouse clerk. It was rejected by