H.E. Bates Companion

London: Michael Joseph, 1964; New York: Farrar, Straus & Company, 1964. Serialized in Woman's Own (an installment identified in the May 1964 issue, other installments not identified).

A woman's reminiscence of one year in her life, at the time of the Battle of Britain in 1940, of her coming-of-age as well as that of her circle of friends, of the effect of war on English country life, and of the spirit and lingo of the Royal Air Force pilots interacting with the rural life of Southern England. Many of the young characters mirror those of Flying Officer X stories, other features of the book suggest Love for Lydia,, and one brings to mind the Pop Larkin novels. In a number of minor details, the novel allows Bates an opportunity to draw upon past work (an anecdote about fish responding to a bomber attack, the allusion to the phrase "Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori," previously a chapter title in O More Than Happy Countryman), and such phrases as "It's just the way it is." As noted by Baldwin (155), the setting of much of the story is a mansion assigned to Royal Air Force officers based on Shopswyke House, a Georgion mansion to which Bates was assigned in Tangmere while writing many of his Flying Officer X stories.

A four-episode television adaptation, directed by Renny Rye and produced by the BBC, was shown in September 1979 (viewable on Youtube). The book was dramatized for BBC Radio in 1982 in a production starring Daniel Day-Lewis.

The New York Times says "Mr. Bates, writing here at the top of his form, has caught the spirit of those desperate days and rendered it in scenes that are both tender and magnificent." The Times Literary Supplement as true of most other reviews, criticized Bates for turning "the Battle of Britain into a gay summer frolic in a pastoral setting."

Reviews:
Books Abroad. (Autumn 1965, p. 452, Ruth Van Horn Zuckerman, attached)
Books and Bookmen (September 1964, p. 24, attached)
New York Times (August 9, 1964, p. BR19, Aileen Pippett, attached)
Saturday Review of Literature (August 8, 1964, p. 35, Eric Moon, attached)
Spectator (September 11, 1964, p. 346, D.C. Kay, attached)
Times (September 10, 1964, p. 15, attached)
Times Literary Supplement (September 10, 1964, p. 838, Peter H. Sutliffe, attached)