We have just read H.E.Bates novel, ‘Fair Stood the Wind for France’, and are getting ready to discuss it tonight in our book club. I was just doing a little background reading, as it is a long time since I’d read any books by Bates, and had quite forgotten very much about him. The title of the novel comes from a poem, Agincourt, by Elizabethan poet Michael Drayton:
FAIR stood the wind for France
When we our sails advance,
Nor now to prove our chance
Longer will tarry;
But putting to the main,
At Caux, the mouth of Seine,
With all his martial train
Landed King Harry.
And taking many a fort,
Furnish’d in warlike sort
Marcheth tow’rds Agincourt
In happy hour;
Skirmishing day by day
With those that stopp’d his way,
Where the French gen’ral lay
With all his power.
These are only the first couple of verses, but the poem continues to recount the story of Battle of Agincourt
Herbert Ernest Bates wrote a large number of novels, short stories, poems, articles, a most prolific man. he was born in 1905 and died in 1972; he came from Northamptonshire, and much of his writing was inspired by the countryside he knew so well when he was growing up. Apart from ‘Fair Stood the Wind..’ his most famous novels are a series about the Larkin family, starting with The Darling Buds of May published in 1958, followed by, A Breath of French Air ,When the Green Woods Laugh, Oh! To be in England and A Little of What You Fancy.
I look forward to this evening’s book club and finding out what my friends think of the novel!
Lois Elsden 