Like most books written in the same period the novel portrays a post war idyllic life, where days can be filled with strawberry picking, eating, meadow walks and more eating. The only major difference is the overt sexuality present within the novels pages, in particular with the Larkin’s eldest daughter Mariette, who is not so sweet and innocent as I seem remember. Anyone familiar with the ITV adaptation will already know most of the story, very little has been changed from the original text. We follow the trials and tribulations of the ever increasing family as they go about their day to day lives. Like many people I was first introduced to the Larkin family through the TV drama with the brilliant David Jason, it was one of those programs I remember from my childhood and I never realised that it was taken from a group of novels. Warm, generous, sun-drenched: a world of strawberry-picking and white tablecloths in orchards on warm evenings where all guests are welcome and, if you like it well enough, you don’t ever have to leave. As the first tenuous signs of spring try to force their way through the rain and sharp winds here in London, I decided I needed a bit of bucolic escapism and bought myself the book (and its sequels). But plot? I honestly couldn’t remember much. I also grew to assume that my paternal grandmother, a farmer’s wife who died when I was small, must have been pretty much like Pam Ferris’s Ma Larkin. The word ‘perfick’ made an impression, of course, and I remember that, every time Catherine Zeta-Jones came on screen as Mariette, my dad would shake his head and say, “I don’t know what they see in her”.
I have vague memories of watching the Darling Buds of May TV series in the early 1990s, although I was too young for much to register.
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