H.E. Bates Companion

In one of ten essays by different authors on features of the English landscape, featuring ample photographs, Bates focuses on the Midlands of his birth, which he characterizes as "this plain homely pudding pattern of elm and grass and hedges [which] is the basis on which the entire English countryside is built. It is the very thing which makes the English country what it is: something different from any other country in the world." He touches on topics that he will further explore over his writing career: his childhood, town squares, the more dramatic topography elsewhere in England, architecture, the interplay of both society and industry in the changing countryside, and hedges themselves -- their birds, flowers, and caretakers. In The English Countryside: a survey of its chief features (ed. H.H. Massingham, London: B.T. Batsford, 1939, pp. 38-54). Reprinted in Country Like This: A Book of the Vale of Aylesbury (1972).