H.E. Bates – författare

Heroic and moving accounts of the R.A.F. in war time by the author of Fair Stood the Wind for France and The Darling Buds of May'After 60 years of writing and reading, I would place H.E. Bates as one of the best short-story writers of my time' Graham GreeneFirst published under the pseudonym of Flying Officer X, H. E. Bates’s stories of the heroic exploits of British bomber crews during the Second World War created a sensation when they appeared in 1942, selling over two million copies all over the world. Bates lived among the painfully young pilots and recorded their lives, and those of their loved ones, with an emotional attention that deeply moved the generation that lived through the war, and an intensity that reverberates down the decades.

Day’s End and Other Stories, H. E. Bates’s first short story collection published in 1928 when he was just 23, depicts the rural lives of quirky characters cast in his distinctive, beautifully drawn style.Each story has a youthful quality, intimate and often profound, perfectly demonstrating the progression of this masterful wordsmith. Bates explores bittersweet young love in ‘The Birthday’, the delightful reflections of a man spellbound by the sounds of the sea and the breathing of his new baby in ‘The Holiday’, and two old friends in ‘Fishing’, described by David Garnett as a tale that “could hardly be shorter and could hardly be slighter, but it is a complete and perfect little work of art, full of humour and containing a profound reflection on human life."This edition of Day’s End and Other Stories, published by Bloomsbury Reader to celebrate H. E. Bates’s 110th birthday anniversary, is enhanced with a bonus story – In View of the Fact That – a rare gem previously published in a small pamphlet in 1927, and never reproduced.

Stories about children are not always for children. In The Watercress Girl, H. E. Bates masterfully depicts a childhood which, by proxy, reveals the mystifying world of the adult. Through a series of short, lyrical stories, the complexities of the world are seen with crystalline purity through the eyes of children. We experience the joyous and painful clarity of youth, full of fears, hopes and make-believe, and the trust and mistrust of the adult world.A little boy, charmed by the golden-throated Miss Mortenson, witnesses her fall from grace in ‘The Pemberton Thrush’. Three children become entangled in a forbidden love when they witness a man attempting suicide in ‘A Great Day for Bonzo’, and a father reveals more of his past than he intends to in ‘The Far Distant Journey’. First published in 1959, The Watercress Girl is a rich collection of stories, exploring a world full of wonder but also of unease; an unease of not yet understanding the world or being fully part of it.

At thirty-four, H.E. Bates was deemed too old for active service in WWII. But as a successful author, was commissioned by the nascent RAP Public Relations unit to publicise the bravery of the fighter pilots. Bates was posted to Oakington and Tangmere air bases where, over drinks with the pilots, he gathered their stories and wrote them as Flying Officer X.The stories convey the pilots' personal qualities and the forces that motivated them. They blend the action and suspense of aerial battles, the tragedy of friendships cut off too soon, and life enduring against all odds.Collected into one volume for the first time, along with five previously unpublished stories from the era, this is a remarkable collection.Includes an introduction by Patrick Bishop, bestselling author of Bomber Boys: Fighting Back 1940-1945