H. E. Bates

Colonel Julian and Other Stories (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Colonel Julian and Other Stories was Bates's first collection following World War II, containing stories he wrote between 1941 and 1951.

The title story 'Colonel Julian' sees an eighty-three-year-old veteran of service in India now hosting pilots in his mansion. Here the old generation meets the new. The Colonel is fond of a young pilot, but also bewildered: by his enthusiasm so different from his own business-like relationship with war, by his lack of perspective on his role in a larger military strategy, and by an apparent absence of ethics.

'The Bedfordshire Clanger' sees the welcome return of Uncle Silas after a ten year hiatus. Bates has Silas regaling his young nephew with a typical tall tale, this one involving a buxom landlady and disappointing meal with a pudding that is 'hard as a hog's back' called the Bedfordshire Clanger, but with a conclusion in which Silas, from then on, is 'never in want fur the nicest bit o' pudden in the world.'

The collection also features bonus story 'For Valour', where the narrator, on a visit to an old airfield some years after the war, meets a café owner who shows him the medals she received after her pilot son was killed over Arnhem, and tells tales of countless soldiers, and now travellers, who continue to pass by.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK eBooks
• Seitenzahl: 194
• Erscheinungstermin: 7. Juni 2016
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781448215140
• Artikelnr.: 45095037

Autorenporträt

H. E. Bates was born in 1905 in the shoe-making town of Rushden, Northamptonshire, and educated at Kettering Grammar School. After leaving school, he worked as a reporter and as a clerk in a leather warehouse. Many of his stories depict life in the rural Midlands, particularly his native Northamptonshire, where he spent many hours wandering the countryside.

His first novel, The Two Sisters (1926) was published by Jonathan Cape when he was just twenty. Many critically acclaimed novels and collections of short stories followed. During WWII he was commissioned into the RAF solely to write short stories, which were published under the pseudonym 'Flying Officer X'. His first financial success was Fair Stood the Wind for France (1944), followed by two novels about Burma, The Purple Plain (1947) and The Jacaranda Tree (1949) and one set in India, The Scarlet Sword (1950). Other well-known novels include Love for Lydia (1952) and The Feast of July (1954).

His most popular creation was the Larkin family which featured in five novels beginning with The Darling Buds of May in 1958. The later television adaptation was a huge success. Many other stories were adapted for the screen, the most renowned being The Purple Plain (1947) starring Gregory Peck, and The Triple Echo (1970) with Glenda Jackson and Oliver Reed.

H. E. Bates married in 1931, had four children and lived most of his life in a converted granary near Charing in Kent. He was awarded the CBE in 1973, shortly before his death in 1974.