H.E. Bates Companion

One of twelve novelists invited by the Islington Public Libraries to address the topic of "my best novel," Bates claims that "I have never read one of my novels" due to a dislike of the finished product. He however cites two short stories ("The Mill" and "The Cruise of the Breadwinner" as "works of whose quality I am most jealous and on which, in bad moments, I feel I shall never be able to improve," his first novel The Two Sisters as never failing "to astonish me, whenever I open it, by its intuitive maturity," and his Burmese novels (The Purple Plain and The Jacaranda Tree) as things of special attachment because of the unusual circumstances leading to their creation. In My Best Novel (Islington Public Libraries, January 1950).