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
USS William H. Bates (SSN-680) Coast and entered Puget Sound Naval Shipyard at Bremerton, Washington, for an extensive refueling overhaul and retrofit. In 1991, after completion of the refueling overhaul, "William H. Bates" home port was changed to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, from which she completed several Western Pacific deployments and operations during the 1990s. "William H. Bates" was decommissioned and simultaneously stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 11 February 2000. She returned to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, where her scrapping via the Nuclear-Powered Ship and Submarine Recycling Program began on 1 October 2002 and was completed on 30 October 2002. USS William H. Bates