We have recently had 20 books by Rushden author, H. E. Bates, donated to Rushden Museum, to add to the five we already have in our collection.
Herbert Ernest Bates was born in Rushden on the 16 May 1905, the son of Mr. and Mrs. A. E. Bates, who lived at 25 Essex Road. He attended Newton Road School and then went on to Kettering Grammar School.
Newton Road School
In January 1926 he had one of his plays accepted for broadcasting by the B.B.C. The play, entitled ‘Loyalty’ was a comedy and was broadcast for the first time from Bournemouth. Listeners in Rushden were not able to hear it but in April 1926 it was broadcast again from Daventry. The Radio Times described it as “a promising work of a young author. A delicate work which has something of the charming, fanciful quality usually associated with the work of Sir James Barrie.”
In July 1926 his first novel “The Two Sisters” was published by Jonathan Cape Ltd., London. It was not expected to sell well, although it was thought it might do better in America than in England. It was described in the Rushden Echo as being well worth the money asked for it, and promised good work for the future.
The first novel by H. E. Bates
At the end of March 1931, by which time H. E. Bates had written several novels and collections of stories, a new novel entitled “Charlotte’s Row,” was to be published by Jonathan Cape. It was the story of a man who made boots in a ‘back shop’ and sends them out to be sewn.
Charlotte’s Row first published in 1931
Although the report in the Rushden Echo says the book is the truth, but not the whole truth, it states that – ‘when Mr. Bates describes a scene he gets the essentials over and makes them vivid. A boot factory from the outside, a whirring workshop when the door is opened, a tapper’s shop with its smell and litter – things like these are handled with consummate skill. Through them “Charlotte’s Row” becomes in part the immortalising medium for which the county of shoemakers has been waiting.’
H. E. Bates
H. E. Bates was awarded the CBE in 1973, just six months before he died in January 1974. He became famous again in 1991, when ‘The Darling Buds of May’ was produced as a television series by his son Richard. The book was written in 1958.
