“These short novels must rank with Mr Bates’ most distinguished work. Mature mastery of form, clean decision in the imagination and the telling, brilliant and tactile detail, poignant communication of feeling and inescapable truth of character, make each of them a full and complete experience.” Viola Garvin, Daily Telegraph

“All three show his talent at its best – his sensitive but workmanlike use of the English language, and his gift of placing his characters against a natural background – beautifully observed and described – to which the reader feels they belong by right.” Peter Quennell Daily Mail

The Simple Life typifies Bates’s knowledge of human relationships. Stella and Barty ‘escape’ to their country cottage every weekend. Stella hates it until young Roger comes along…

The Four Beauties is the recollections of a young man’s affairs with the beautiful Davenport sisters, Tina, Sophie and Christabel. The unexpected ending not only explains the title of the story but reveals the author’s mastery of his art.

The Chords of Youth – that amiable crackpot Aunt Leonora once again appears, this time in the cause of Anglo-German relations.

The final story is about a South Sea island community and the crisis that brings the will to live back to Fat Uncle. The White Wind captures the powerful and primitive atmosphere of the South Pacific.

Classic World War II romance.

Southern England, Summer 1940. Elizbeth Cartwright, still in her teens, finds her life revolutionised and shattered by her friendship with a group of fighter pilots engaged in a desperate conflict. Day by precarious day she shares with these dedicated young men – hardly more than boys – dangers unbearably heightened by the peace of the English countryside. The novel is an account of two battles: one for victory in the sky, the other, equally desperate, for the very soul of the girl herself.

“He pinpoints sights, sounds and smells with a wallowing enjoyment …the framework in which they move is meticulously designed, spare and evocative” Evening Standard

A poetic story of the English countryside.

Deborah Loveday, a small, phlegmatic and courageous woman, knows what it is to suffer. As a young woman she worked as a servant girl, before becoming a farmer, and sacrificing herself to her land. The Fallow Land is a vivid and tragic story of one woman’s stuggle against pverty, conducte with courage and independence of spirit in the face of obstacles, losses and betrayals, and of the land’s ultimate indifferent victory. “A poem of the Englis countryside which never loses its lyric intensity, its delicacy and its strength” The Times Literary Supplement

“The Fallow Land is much the best piece of work that Bates has done; and that means it is very good indeed” Spectator

The horror and the humanity of war come too close, when a little fishing boat, the Breadwinner, rescues a pilot shot down in the Channel during a dogfight. The only trouble is, the pilot is German. As the young fisherman tends his wounds, he comes to realize that war is not exciting, and the enemy before him is just a young boy like himself – indistinguishable from the once glamorous English pilot who soon also crashes near the boat.