The title of the book is a quote from William Shakespeare's Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? The next day he began writing The Darling Buds of May in, as he described it later, ‘a fever of excitement and laughter’. Watching it reminded me how much I had enjoyed the books as a young teenager, when my Nan surreptitiously lent them to me. He worked as a journalist and clerk on a local newspaper before publishing his first book, The Two Sisters, when he was twenty.

The main question of the book is whether the pregnant 17 year old daughter can fool a random tax collector into thinking that he is the father of her baby. I also got the growing feeling that Charlie was being entrapped by all the adult Larkins as husband fodder for Mariette. Stopped reading three chapters in, because the characters were so unappealing that I was getting terribly depressed.

Po ovom romanu je snimljena i sjajna serija (pre nekoliko meseci prikazivao ju je HRT) sa sjajnim Dejvidom Džejsonom (Del boj) i Ketrin Zita-Džonsovom.

While response from the public and the popular press was uniformly positive, literary critics, especially as the series continued, generally condemned the series as trivial and undeserving of Bates's talents.Concerning the series of five novels, Bates closes the final volume in his autobiography ( The World in Ripeness, 147-152) by recollecting the inspirations for the books, and by placing the novels in the context of both post-war England and his own personal philosophy.

Yes, I do want to know what happens to them next (and yes, I almost certainly will read the next in the series). Minor issues present such as mild cracking, inscriptions, inserts, light foxing, tanning and thumb marking. The characters (mostly Pop and Ma, the children aren’t explored much) are fun-loving but also kind-hearted and generous, sending away people that come to visit with food, such as nice cuts of pork from their pig they just slaughtered. Best read in the midst of winter to remind you that golden summers and autumns will indeed come round again.At the beginning we suspect foul play, our sinful minds believe that the naive young man is going to be seduced into a marriage of convenience, for Mariette Larkin suspects she is pregnant by another man. I certainly feel that Bates’ writing is something of an older person’s taste and, to be blunt, something of a white middle class Englishman’s taste. Many of his stories depict life in the rural Midlands of England, particularly his native Northamptonshire.

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 1940 and 1980.

Set in Kent, where I myself lived for four years, the series followed the life of the Larkin family. Having produced 6 children without the encumbrance of a marriage certificate, Ma and Pop Larking know they can easily manage a grandchild that comes from "the wrong side of the blanket". Thou art more lovely and more temperate: / Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, / And summer's lease hath all too short a date; [. All this wickedness is only hinted at but never seen, which under the circumstances is just as well. I don't know how to describe this book - it's a small, perfectly round pastry - a profiterole if you will - of a book.