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
Josephine White Bates Josephine White Bates Josephine White Bates (8 July 1862 – 1934) was a Canadian-born American author who preferred to use her married name Mrs. E. Lindon Bates. She was the author of "A. Blind Lead", 1886; "Bunch-Grass Stories", 1892; and "Mercury Poisoning in the Industries of New York City and Vicinity", 1912. Josephine White was born 8 July 1862 at Portage du Faur, near Ottawa, Canada, the daughter of George E. and Mary White. She was a student in Lake Forest, Illinois, and at the Lake Forest College, 1876-80. She married Lindon Wallace Bates (born 1858), a hydraulic engineer, of