How Sleep the Brave

These stories, wry, often poignant, still move the reader today * The Times *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 GreeneOne of the most vividly evocative writers of English … able to conjure up in a handful of words whole landscapes and moods * Listener *H.E. Bates could achieve a quality of lyrical intensity that few contemporary novelists can match * Times Literary Supplement *He was without an equal in England in the kind of story he had made his own and stood in the direct line of succession of fiction writers of English countryside and that includes George Eliot, Hardy and D. H. Lawrence * The Times *H. E. Bates, in my opinion, is a much finer writer than is commonly realised. His sensitiveness to beauty and to character is astonishing – David Garnett

H. E. Bates was born in Northamptonshire in 1905. He published his first novel, The Two Sisters, when he was twenty, and for the next decade built up a reputation as a writer of great versatility. During the Second World War Bates was commissioned by the RAF as a short story writer, where he wrote the acclaimed How Sleep the Brave and The Greatest People in the World. His most popular creation was the effervescent Larkin family about whom he wrote five novels including The Darling Buds of May and A Little of What You Fancy. In 1973 H. E. Bates was awarded the C.B.E. He died in 1974.

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