Description
Book SynopsisHeroic and moving accounts of the R.A.F. in war time by the author of Fair Stood the Wind for France and The Darling Buds of May
''After 60 years of writing and reading, I would place H.E. Bates as one of the best short-story writers of my time'' Graham Greene
First published under the pseudonym of Flying Officer X, H. E. Bates's stories of the heroic exploits of British bomber crews during the Second World War created a sensation when they appeared in 1942, selling over two million copies all over the world. Bates lived among the painfully young pilots and recorded their lives, and those of their loved ones, with an emotional attention that deeply moved the generation that lived through the war, and an intensity that reverberates down the decades.
Trade ReviewThese stories, wry, often poignant, still move the reader today * The Times *
After 60 years of writing and reading, I would place H.E. Bates as one of the best short-story writers of my time -- Graham Greene
One of the most vividly evocative writers of English ... able to conjure up in a handful of words whole landscapes and moods * Listener *
H.E. Bates could achieve a quality of lyrical intensity that few contemporary novelists can match * Times Literary Supplement *
He was without an equal in England in the kind of story he had made his own and stood in the direct line of succession of fiction writers of English countryside and that includes George Eliot, Hardy and D. H. Lawrence * The Times *
