![]() ![]() ![]() Indeed, I first learned of this book – which has long fallen from favour as a ‘classic’ – from the early 90s TV series of the same name, starring the rather wonderful David Jason as Pa Larkin. It is fun, irreverent and ‘means no harm’ in any of the gentle fun-poking of various characters who would be easily recognised to anyone living between 19. ![]() Living ‘off the grid’, as it were.Įccentric and good-humoured throughout, the story is really homage to the best of what it means to be English in the early 1950s, as the effects of the Second World War faded but before the advance of technology really began. ![]() They are a simple family with simple life values, ostensibly ‘poor’ but, more accurately, just not playing by the taxman’s rules. The book looks at the family of Pop and Ma Larkin and the various shenanigans they get up to in idyllic rural Kent. It also helps that Bates is on much firmer ground with comedy than he is with drama. ‘The Darling Buds of May’ scores considerably higher from this point of view. Rich people being boringly melodramatic doesn’t fill me with a great deal of sympathy for the characters, to be honest. I read Bates’ ‘ Love For Lydia‘ last year and was not especially entranced by either the writing or the whole raison d’etre of the story. ![]()
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