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.

Ma and Pop are more calculating than they let on (especially considering this came out in 1958), but gosh, you can’t help but love them.Bates goes on to cite the novels as reflective of the vast changes to the English countryside in the 1950s but, more significantly, he notes that "it is not to be denied, moreover, that there is something of myself in Pop Larkin: a passionate Englishman, a profound love of Nature, of the sounds and sights of the countryside, of colour, flowers and things sensual; a hatred of pomp, pretension and humbug; a lover of children and family life; an occasional breaker of rules, a flouter of conventions.

The next day he began writing The Darling Buds of May in, as he described it later, ‘a fever of excitement and laughter’. Bates,essentially a lover of the countryside, was born in Rushden, Northamptonshire in 1905 and enjoyed walking around the countryside, often the inspiration for many of his stories. however, reminds us that Bates also differed from Pop in important ways, such as his literary, gardening, and artistic interests, among other things. An afternoon of delicious golden content folded its transparent envelope more and more softly about the paradisiacal Larkin world, over the outlying meadow scintillating with its million buttercups and the shady fragrant walnut tree. It starred David Jason (from 'Only Fools and Horses' fame) as Pop Larkin, and Catherine Zeta-Jones ('The Mask of Zorro') played his eldest daughter Mariette.Sometimes I read a book description and think I will take a chance with a book outside my typical Mormon or Christian romance genre. The first book was very successful, appearing first in the United States and then in Britain, film rights were sold prior to publication, and Bates also worked on a stage version.

Waiting for them is a young man: Mr Cedric Charlton, an upstanding inspector of taxes, come to discover why they haven't paid any.

Instead, it's those people who are concerned with appearances and respectability who are the objects of fun, from the tweed-clad spinster, to the local squire concerned with keeping his tumbling pile to the white-collar office clerk. I have read lot of his books over number of years and this classic series it has not aged like other books of its type it's the sort of P.