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  • When the Green Woods Laugh
When the Green Woods Laugh

  • Imprint: Penguin

  • ISBN: 9780141029689

  • Length: 128  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 7mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 96g

  • RRP: £8.99

When the Green Woods Laugh

'There!' Pop said. 'There's the house. There's Gore Court for you. What about that, eh? How's that strike you? Better than St Paul's, ain't it, better than St Paul's?'

And so Pop Larkin - junk-dealer, family man and Dragon's Blood connoisseur - manages to sell the nearby crumbling, tumbling country home to city dwellers Mr and Mrs Jerebohm for a pretty bundle of notes. Now he can build his daughter Mariette the pool she's long been nagging him for.

But the Larkin's new neighbours aren't quite so accepting of country ways - especially Pop's little eccentricities. In fact, it's not long before a wobbly boat, a misplaced pair of hands and Mrs Jerebohm's behind have Pop up before a magistrate . . .

  • Imprint: Penguin

  • ISBN: 9780141029689

  • Length: 128  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 7mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 96g

  • RRP: £8.99

Reviews

  • They are absolute comfort books . . . All five titles are being rereleased just in time for summer

    The Lady

  • Pop is as sexy, genial, generous, and boozy as ever. Ma is a worthy match for him in all these qualities

    -, The Times

  • 'Pop Larkin, Ma and their progeny . . . are essentially English of the rich and ribald England of Chaucer and Shakespeare. A superb and timeless comedy'

    -, Scotsman

  • As funny as Evelyn Waugh and as enchanting as Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie. Don't miss it

    -, Herald

  • The Larkins live - these novels please us by escaping definition

    -, Guardian

  • Like Wodehouse's Jeeves, Bates' Larkins must continue in their own delightful milieu - the Kentish countryside

    -, New York Times

More in this Series

About the Author

H. E. Bates

H. E. Bates was born in 1905 in Northamptonshire. He worked as a journalist and clerk on a local newspaper before publishing his first book, The Two Sisters, when he was twenty. In the next fifteen years he acquired a distinguished reputation for his stories about English country life. During the Second World War he was a Squadron Leader in the R.A.F. The Darling Buds of May, the first of the popular Larkin family novels, was followed by A Breath of French Air (1959), When the Green Woods Laugh (1960), Oh! To Be in England (1963). His works have been translated into sixteen languages. H. E. Bates was awarded the C.B.E. in 1973 and died in January 1974.

H. E. Bates

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Extracts

The Darling Buds of May by H. E. Bates

This year we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the publication of The Darling Buds of May. Read on for an excerpt from H. E. Bates' classic novella in which the Larkin family go for a drive in 'perfick wevver!

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