H.E. Bates Companion

A portrait of a sheltered and uncultured butcher's wife exposed to a new tenant in the countryside -- a flamboyant homosexual enthusiastic about decorating, cooking, and throwing large parties. This picture of social change in post-war rural England takes its title from a Tennyson poem of the same name. In Harper's Bazaar (March, 1957), Argosy (January 1958), Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal and Other Stories/The Enchantress and Other Stories (1961), Seven by Five/The Best of H.E. Bates (1963), Love in a Wych Elm and Other Stories (2009).