The Darling Buds of May (novel) any barriers to free enterprise. The title of the book is a quote from William Shakespeare's Sonnet 18: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate: / Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, / And summer's lease hath all too short a date;" [...] Pop and Ma Larkin celebrate sex, youth, and vitality. In each novella in the series, Pop Larkin kisses, caresses, and pinches most of the women that he encounters. Ma Larkin expects this behaviour and approves of it. When told that Pop has kissed the middle-aged
H. E. Bates provided the inspiration for his stories. Bates was a great lover of the countryside and this was exemplified in two volumes of essays entitled "Through the Woods" and "Down the River". Both have been reprinted numerous times. He discarded his first novel, written when he was in his late teens, but his second, and the first one to be published, "The Two Sisters", was inspired by one of his midnight walks, which took him to the small village of Farndish. There, late at night, he saw a light burning in a cottage window and it was this that triggered the