Ralph Bates

[Jonathan]

In the late 1930's Time Magazine said that the Swindon-born writer Ralph Bates was "a better writer than Ernest Hemingway". Author, mountaineer, political agitator, soldier, academic - Ralph Bates was all these things, and yet today he is hardly remembered even in his home-town. Bates spent the first thirty years of his life in Swindon (he worked in the Great Western Railway factory) before moving to Spain. During the Spanish Civil War he fought in the Republican International Brigade. Bates was briefly arrested for arms smuggling when travelling through France back to Spain in February 1937. Upon his return, he moved to Madrid and became responsible for the International Brigade's newspaper, `Volunteer for Liberty’.

Later, he settled in America where he became a Professor of English Literature at New York University. Many of Bates’s novels and short stories, such as Sierra, Lean Men and The Olive Field, are set in Spain. Another book, The Fields of Paradise, contains stories written during a brief stay in Mexico. His final book, The Dolphin in the Wood, is a semi-autobiographical account of his early life in North Wiltshire. Ralph Bates died in New York in 2000, aged 101.



There was nothing on GR about him, so I have added what I can.

I have a copy of The Olive Field, which I am starting today, and will hopefully have time to give it a decent review.

Obituary here: http://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/...

and here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/04/nyr...

[Nate D]

Better than Hemingway perhaps, but does he have his face in relief on a hotel?