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The earliest of these stories, The Flame, was first published in 1926, having been written a year earlier, when I was twenty; the latest appeared in 1961. The intervening thirty-five years, together with the thirty-five stories I have chosen from that period, therefore give this collection its title, Seven by Five. My aim has been to make the book as widely representative of my work as a short story writer as possible, but I have nevertheless refrained from including any of the war-time stories I wrote under the pseudonym of 'Flying Officer X', any of the stories of Uncle Silas and any novellas, since these all belong, in my view, to quite separate categories. *The title of the British edition.
Fair Stood the Wind for France, first published in 1944, is author H. E. Bates' fictional account of a downed English bomber-pilot and his crew over occupied France during World War II. The men are taken in by a French family who hide them in their home. However, the pilot, injured during the plane's landing, must remain in France to heal, while his crew begin their journey back to friendly territory. The pilot falls in love with the home-owner's daughter, their relationship grows and eventually they travel together across France, seeking a way back to England. Fair Stood the Wind for France rises above the average romance, however. Set against the horrors of war, it takes on a life-affirming force, enhanced by the simple, yet elegant prose of the author. Bates also excels at evoking a sense of place; much of the story occurs over the course of a hot summer in rural France, and there are many beautiful descriptions of the French countryside as it bakes in the summer heat. In 1980, the book was the subject of a 4-part television mini-series by the BBC.
"If we set H. E. Bates's best tales against the best of Chekhov's," Graham Greene declared, "I do not believe it would be possible, with any conviction, to argue that the Russian was the finer artist." The sampler of H. E. Bates stories presented here shows the merit of that praise and displays the range and aspects of Bates's work from his first published story, "The Flame," to one of his very last, "The Song of the Wren." In his long and prolific literary career, Bates (1905-1974) produced twenty-five novels, a three-volume autobiography, nine books of essays, several plays and children's books, as well as his important and perhaps most enduring achievement, twenty-three collections of short stories. A Month by the Lake & Other Stories displays Bates's extraordinary talent for concisely getting at the heart of the matter. Whether he is dealing with romance in middle age (the title story), or the almost painful clarity of a child's world ("The Cowslip Field"), or encapsulating the disintegration and tragedy of a man and a house and the era and class they represent ("The Flag")-Bates's compassion for humanity remains constant. As Anthony Burgess remarks in his introduction, Bates "achieved such sovereignty of what literary land he inherited that he deserves the homage of our uncomplicated enjoyment... Bates's affection for ordinary people is one of his shining virtues. But he himself, as I knew, and as this compilation should make clear, was, is, far from ordinary." Book jacket.
The six long stories of A Party for the Girls present H.E. Bates at his finest. A crack shot at understated tragedy, Bates is perhaps at his best with comedy and character--consider the opening line of the title story: "Miss Tompkins, who was seventy-six, bright pink-looking in a bath-salts sort of way and full of an alert but dithering energy, looked out the drawing-room window for the twentieth time since breakfast and found herself growing increasingly excited." Though virtually unknown here, as Publishers Weekly put it in their review of Bates's A Month by the Lake & Other Stories (1987), his nearly perfect stories...should set his readers clamoring for more... He is as adept at the seductive rise and fall of his narrative voice as he is cunning with naturalistic dialogue. Comparisons to Joyce, Chekhov, and Mansfield are inevitable.
"Daniel Randolph Deal is a Southern aristocrat, having the required bloodline, but little of the nobility. A man resistant to the folly of ethics, he prefers a selective, self-indulgent morality. He is a confessed hedonist, albeit responsibly so."--Back cover
Readers who have discovered the delights of the British master storyteller H.E. Bates will welcome this third collection. Gathered here are twenty stories written between 1938 and 1964 which are gems of human observation.
The former Guardian royal correspondent “wisely explores a host of issues surrounding the royals, from the monarchy’s role to the legacy of Diana” (Get Surrey). It was an amazing feat in the twenty-frst century that Queen Elizabeth II, a small woman in her late-eighties, was one of the most recognisable people on the planet. The world had utterly, irreversibly, and radically evolved since she ascended the throne in 1952 and yet, in an era of instant celebrity, she remained, more popular than ever: a bastion of certainty and comfort to the British and many other people during uncertain times. But with her death on September 8, 2022, questions remain: How secure is the British Royal Family? How much depended on the person of the Queen herself, and how much on the institution? To answer these questions, Royalty Inc. combines a history of the British Crown’s evolution through the modern age with a journalistic peek behind the curtain at the machinery that sustains the Windsors today. Written by the Guardian’s former Royal correspondent, its line is neither royalist nor republican. Instead it takes a clear-eyed look at a host of issues, including the future of the Commonwealth, the Monarchy’s role in the British constitution and class system, King Charles’ notorious “black spider memos,” the true scale of the Royal finances, the legacy of Diana, and the problems and pressures faced by any heir to the throne in the future. “Fearless and perceptive . . . Stephen Bates tells it like it is, covering every aspect with rare humour and intelligence. I couldn’t recommend it more highly.” —Literary Review
First published in 1960, this collection of four novellas continue Bates's sensitive, often witty, explorations of unhappy love. The title story, 'An Aspidistra in Babylon', is a reminiscence of a girl's loss of innocence. Christine, who describes herself at eighteen as 'dull as one of the aspidistras that cluttered up ... our little boarding house' is seduced by the forty-year-old Captain Blaine, who charms her imagination with stories of a life on the Continent. 'A Month by the Lake' is a comedy of errors set in 1920s Lake Como revolving around two middle-aged vacationers unable to express their affection for each other. A film version starring James Fox, Vanessa Redgrave, and Uma Thurman was directed by John Irvin in 1995. Also featured in this collection is 'A Prospect of Orchards', as narrated by a familiarly mild-mannered Bates character, concerning unfolding affections and blossoming relationships in this quirky tale of extra-marital intrigue. In contrast to this is the darker tone of 'The Grapes of Paradise', where the narrator relates the tale of a fellow traveller in Tahiti, laced with callousness, jealousy, and violence. Included in this edition is bonus story 'The Duet', first published in 1935 and never before featured in any collection. It is the tale of a young choirmaster's son, eager for the autographs of two famous singers. Ignored throughout the day, he follows the players he now considers haughty to a private room where, though the keyhole, he spies an intimate and affectionate scene between them that changes his perceptions completely. The Spectator calls Bates 'a supreme anecdotalist, endowed with vast self-confidence and the gift of imagery ten times the size of life.'
Published in 1970, The Triple Echo was Bates's last significant novella, but one which he described as taking twenty-five years to complete. Set in the 1940s, the wife of a war prisoner lives in desperate loneliness and fear on an isolated farmstead. She encounters a young farmboy completely out of his element as a soldier, and the two carve out a relationship in defiance of the war around them. His decision to escape the military and to dress as his lover's sister to avoid detection eventually leads to tragedy. In a late essay Bates discusses the long evolution of the story's plot, conceived in 1943 with two sisters and completed in 1968 with just one, in what Bates calls 'an exceptional example of stumbling and groping or, if you will, of my own prolonged stupidity.' A film version starring Oliver Reed, Brian Deacon, and Glenda Jackson was premiered in November 1972, and issued in the United States with the title Soldiers in Skirts.