Fresh, lyrical and full of enchantment, the nature writing of H. E. Bates is alive with the joys of his beloved English countryside, from his hometown in Northamptonshire to the orchards of Kent. Bringing together a rich variety of the essays he wrote over half a century from 1924 to 1973, Why I Live in the Country is an invitation to slow down, breathe in and look to the land for the wonders we might find there.
From the first inklings of spring to the deep silence of midwinter, these essays move through the seasons of English rural life in a collection that celebrates the beauty in every hedgerow, field and tree.
‘He was without an equal in England within the kind of story he had made his own and stood in the direct line of succession of . . . George Eliot, Hardy and D. H. Lawrence’ The Times
‘[He had] the gift of putting the English countryside down on paper’ Guardian
From the first inklings of spring to the deep silence of midwinter, these essays move through the seasons of English rural life in a collection that celebrates the beauty in every hedgerow, field and tree.
‘He was without an equal in England within the kind of story he had made his own and stood in the direct line of succession of . . . George Eliot, Hardy and D. H. Lawrence’ The Times
‘[He had] the gift of putting the English countryside down on paper’ Guardian
Reviews
One first notes his exuberant power of physicality, of evoking settings with delicate intensity
The best short-story writer of his generation . . . Bates spun stories of sexual compulsion, menace, camaraderie, alienation and endurance
His prose is simple in structure, yet quivering with colour, scent and heat . . . effortless opulence
He wrote with a precise felicity, a sure observation expressed in an unerring sense of words . . . a prose poet . . . he was without an equal in England within the kind of story he had made his own and stood in the direct line of succession of fiction writers of the English countryside that includes George Eliot, Hardy and D. H. Lawrence
He has . . . an evident artistic sincerity, a finely drawn imagination, and a supple and polished prose
He can invest whichever he is writing about with the greatest lyrical beauty, and often it is from the sternest touches of realism that his most lovely moments emerge . . . HE Bates can always bring the most vivid creation to what he is describing
His work, like a piece of finely wrought tapestry, has no loose ends. He writes in soft colours
HE Bates was content with the gift of putting the English countryside down on paper
HE Bates was a great storyteller, and a beautiful writer
Bate's strength lies in basic uniformity, wholly natural absorption in rural life and character, lyrical feeling, and tragic awareness in response to human experience . . . vivid and memorable
He went on writing about England and the English villages and small provincial towns picking out the small people in vivid memorable language
No one . . . has succeeded in capturing the same elusive beauty as Mr Bates and in rendering it in such flexible English prose
His garden is like his prose: well planned, clean, nurtured, and, in effect, rich and astonishingly beautiful
Bates is a master of the short story, and the novella . . . He has a sharp, clear vision of character showing itself in a situation, and can completely convince the reader