About H.E. Bates
(1905 - 1974)
Born May 16th, 1905, at No. 51, Grove Road, in the boot and shoe making town of Rushden in Northamptonshire.
His parents, Lizzie and Albert, name him Herbert Ernest, but no one seems to know why and everyone calls him Bert.
He is a petite, blonde, blue eyed boy who is much loved by his great-grandmother, grandparents and many aunts and uncles.
1907: Sister Edna is born
1910: His father, a staunch Methodist, insists the children go to church three times on Sundays, which Bert hates.
Photo: Baby Edna with Bert and their mother, Lizzie
Spends every weekend and holiday with his maternal grandparents, George and Pricilla Lucas, in Higham Ferrers, helping them on their small-holding. Learns about the countryside, listens to his grandfather's stories and is blissfully happy.
George is also a fireman. One night a factory fire threatens a row of thatched cottages where George grew up. He carries a baby girl to safety from the very same cottage he'd been born in. When that baby grows up she will marry Bert.
Photo: George is 4th from the left
1914: The family move one street away to No. 15 Essex Road.
1915: Several Battalions of the Royal Welch Fusiliers are billeted with families in the towns and villages around Rushden, en route to the front.
Photo: Soldiers from the Royal Welch Fusiliers with H.E. (cross legged), H.E.'s parents, Albert and Lizzie, his grandparents, George and Priscilla, Lizzie's sister, Flo, and H.E. with his sister, Edna.
1916: Brother Stanley is born.
1916: Wins a free place at Kettering Grammar School, but is so shy that at first he hides from morning assembly, doesn't do well and is caned by the Headmaster for helping another boy in an exam.
He dreams of becoming a footballer, or an athlete, or a painter, until a new English teacher arrives, Edmund Kirby, who inspires him to become a writer.
Photo: Edmund Kirby drawn by John Ward
1919: Starts writing poetry, falls in love with a girl called Con, writes even more poetry and is caught kissing her in the 1st Class Waiting Room of Kettering Station so often that he wrote later a plaque could be put up saying 'H.E. Bates Loved Here'. In 2017 Kettering Civic Society arranged for just such a plaque to be placed on the wall outside the waiting room, on platform 3.
1921: Passes the Oxford and Cambridge Entrance Exam, but not with a scholarship, and has to leave school. He is 16.
1922: Works as a reporter on a local paper but hates it and after 8 weeks, sensing he’s about to be sacked, resigns!
Takes long ‘midnight walks’ across the fields, sees a candle burning in a window and has an idea for a story about two sisters.
1922-1924: Works as a clerk in a warehouse where he finds he can get all his work done by 9 o'clock and spend the rest of the day writing in secret. He writes a novel, throws it away, writes two more versions of it and is sacked when the owner of the warehouse finds out.
He sends the novel, The Two Sisters, to 10 publishers, signs on at the dole queue, plays a lot of football and cricket, writes a column in a local paper under the name ‘Boy Blue’ (because of his pale, blue eyes), goes to dances, has a motorbike, and is stopped for speeding whilst driving a friend's car!
1925: February: Is invited to a friend’s birthday party where he meets a girl called Marjorie Cox, known as Madge. Their friends have set them up to meet; she is 15, he is 19. Born in the same cottage as his grandfather, she is the baby he rescued from the fire-threatened cottage.
Madge lives two streets away from Bert; she left school at 14 and is working in a boot and shoe factory.
They fall in love, spend the summer cycling, walking, picnicking and watching fox cubs play.
Madge drawn by John Ward, from The Vanished World
For a while he writes to Madge as 'Irene' and signs himself 'Richard', and some friends will write to him as Richard all his life.
Letter to Madge: 'Irene from Richard' 1928
1925: December: A letter arrives, addressed to Miss Bates, from Jonathan Cape Ltd, who want to publish his novel.
He goes to London to meet the firm's 'reader', Edward Garnett, who he will rely and depend upon for advice until Garnett's dies in 1937.
1926: The Two Sisters is published. His short stories begin to appear in newspapers and journals.
Photo: Edward Garnett by Yvonne Gregory
He is also an angry young man. Furious at the government’s response to the National Strike and social injustice he writes a seering (and very short) play about poverty, The Last Bread, which is published by The Labour Publishing Company.
And writes another play called Loyalty, about people who make a fuss about meeting royalty, which airs for four nights on the radio.
He becomes known as 'H.E.'
Photo: H.E. by Howard Coster
1926: Garnett finds him work in a bookshop in London, but H.E. hates the noise of the city, can’t think or write and is late to work so often that he writes a children’s story, The Seekers, for the owner by way of an apology.
1927: Goes to the Rhine with the German bookseller Charles Lahr and a party of Lahr’s friends including the artist William Roberts, who draws a portrait of him (now in Tate Britain), but he misses Madge, writes to her every day, sends her gifts as often as he can and comes home early.
1929: Day’s End, his first collection of stories, is published and he’s invited to stay with a friend at the Deanery in Windsor Castle where he stays overnight and leaves his mackintosh behind, something that becomes a bit of a habit!
1930: Goes to Brittany and Paris with Madge, comes home, sells several manuscripts to an American collector and is able, at last, to put down a mortgage on a house and make plans to marry.
1931: They marry in Rushden on the 31st July...
...and move to 'The Granary', a converted granary barn in the village of Little Chart, in Kent.
1932: Ann is born
1933: Judith is born
1937: Richard is born.
He works hard, writing stories and articles, reviewing books and trying to make ends meet. He makes a garden out of the granary farmyard...
...and has a summer house built, where he can write.
Photo: Taken several years later, H.E. is in his 'summer house'; the youngest of the children, Jonathan, is in the wheelbarrow, pushed by Judith, and then Ann and Richard.)
1938: The editor of Atlantic Monthly invites him to Boston to edit an American edition of his novel, Spella Ho. He sails to New York on the Aquitania, goes to a baseball match, eats a lot of ice cream, makes life long friends, comes home and starts writing Gee! in his letters.
1939: Jonathan is born
1939: War is declared; he tries for a commission but is turned down. He joins the Home Guard in Little Chart but is so afraid of the rifle he's been given that he says he would be better employed making marmalade. Continues writing his Country Life column for the Spectator magazine whilst looking for a job in one of the wartime ministries.
1941: Is commissioned into the RAF to write stories, the first commission of its kind, and is sent to RAF Oakington, under cover, to observe bomber crews in action. The stories are published weekly in a national newspaper under the pseudonym 'Flying Officer X'.
1942: February: His cover is blown and he’s posted to RAF Tangmere to observe night fighters.
1944: His best selling wartime novel, Fair Stood the Wind for France is published.
1944: Is posted to France to report on the V1 (‘Doodlebug’) launch sites, and then...
1945: ...to India and Burma to write news stories for America.
1945: November: He is demobbed and the family are re-united.
1945: His play, The Day of Glory, is performed in Salisbury to launch the newly formed Arts Council of Great Britain.
1946: Wants to start a national scheme to put art into schools and asks Sir Kenneth Clarke if he will lend him paintings from the National Gallery’s store. When Clarke can’t help he buys 25 old-master water colours and donates them to his old school, adding more to the collection in later years. Now held in the Northants Records Office, it becomes known as KGS Painting Collection.
('Derelict Cottage' by John Piper in The KGS Painting Collection.)
1947-1950: Writes three wartime novels: The Purple Plain, The Jacaranda Tree and The Scarlet Sword.
Photo: H.E. and Gregory Peck, who starred in the film version of The Purple Plain
1945: Has an operation to resolve a duodenal diverticulum and is free from abdominal pain for the first time in his adult life.
Makes the first of many trips to France and Switzerland, with Madge driving,
spends time with his children…
…and goes fishing.
1952: Writes his semi-biographical novel, Love for Lydia.
1953-1954: Sails to New York and then to Tahiti with Madge. Spends 3 months in the Bahamas as a guest of the Bahamian Government to finish a history of the islands begun by Hilary St George Saunders.
1957: The first of his 10 grandchildren is born.
1957: Is in Venice with David Lean to see Summertime being filmed.
Photo: Norman Spencer with Lydia Brazzi, H.E., and David Lean
1958: Writes his first novel set in Kent, The Darling Buds of May.
1958: The Daffodil Sky, his 25th collection of short stories, is published.
1962-1964: Collaborates with Carol Barker on a series of children’s books about a little refugee donkey, Achilles the Donkey.
1965: Celebrates his 60th birthday at The Granary with family and friends.
1966: Recovers from a second heart attack and spends a month in Madeira with Madge.
1967: Begins a regular gardening column in Living Magazine.
1969: Publishes the first volume of his autobiography, The Vanished World.
1970: Goes to Cairo to see the pyramids and on to Baalbek, in the Lebanon, with Madge.
1971: Writes the first of two full length books on gardening, A Love of Flowers.
1973: Continues writing and travelling, working in his garden...
…spending time with Madge, his family...
...and his grandchildren.
1974: Is awarded a CBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honour’s List.
Dies on the 29th January after a short illness. Obituaries appear in several of the national newspapers including The Times, Financial Times and The Telegraph.
Family life - At home with H.E. Bates
Watch some wonderful footage from home movies of H.E. and his family at home in his beautiful garden in Kent in the early 1960s.