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
Harry Bates (author) Day the Earth Stood Still". The movie starred Keanu Reeves as the alien Klaatu and Jennifer Connelly as Dr. Helen Benson. David Scarpa wrote the screenplay based on Edmund H. North's 1951 screenplay. The critical and commercial success of the 1951 movie relied on the novel themes Bates introduced in his short story. Ever since H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds" (1898), aliens were often described as menacing, aggressive, and murderous, with a degraded moral and ethical sense. In Bates' story, aliens are the opposite, possessing a good moral character. The alien Klaatu's face "radiated kindness, wisdom, the purest