First edition. Red boards in pictorial dustwrapper, with a wraparound illustration by Broom Lynne. Author's presentation copy, inscribed on publication to friends Dee and Norman Winch, alluding to their involvement with the book's genesis, "Dear Dee & Norman - I hope you will have fun with this, my picture of the National Elf Lark, for which you are in some ways responsible - with all love H.E. 1/58". A very good copy, the spine somewhat faded and a little wear to the corners, in a very good dustwrapper indeed with trifling wear to the corners and joints of the spine.

Bates and Winch were fellow RAF officers during the war and it was on a visit to lunch with him and his wife, in a little village near Sittingbourne in Kent, one Easter Sunday that Bates conceived the idea for The Darling Buds of May. They had stopped at a village shop where Bates' wife had gone in to buy provisions.
"As I sat waiting for her in the car I noticed, outside the shop, a ramshackle lorry that had been recently painted a violent electric blue. Two or three minutes later there came out of the shop, in high spirits, a remarkable family: father a perky, sprightly character with dark sideburnings, Ma a youngish handsome woman of enormous girth, wearing a bright salmon jumper and shaking with laughter like a jelly, and six children, the eldest of them a beautiful dark haired girl of twenty or so. All were sucking at colossal multi-coloured ice-creams and at the same time crunching potato crisps. As they piled into the lorry there was an air of gay and uninhibited abandon about it all. Wild laughter rang through the village and the whole scene might have come out of Merrie England" - H.E. Bates (The World in Ripeness - An Autobiography).
During the following lunch, Bates related what had happened on the journey after which, it is recounted, he paused and said, "That has given me an idea..."
That idea was to revitalise his career as an author and created his most enduring work, The Darling Buds of May. Whilst first editions are easily found and signed copies are not rare, meaningful association copies are very seldom encountered.

Stock ID: 45437