My Uncle Silas is a book of short stories about a bucolic elderly Bedfordshire man, written by H. E. Bates and illustrated by Edward Ardizzone.

Bates's Uncle Silas figure, and many of the lineaments of his character, were based on a real person named Joseph Betts, the husband of H. E. Bates's maternal grandmother's sister Mary Ann.

The figure he portrays is Rabelaisian and robust, a true countryman of pithy and roguish character, simultaneously earthy and whimsical, crabbed and wicked, yet full of humour and "strong original devilishness."

The boy (representing the author in childhood) enters into most of the stories, sometimes as a listener and sometimes a participant: his relationship to Silas and the old man's way of putting a slant on his stories for the boy's benefit are essential parts of the whole effect.

In 1957 Michael Joseph Ltd of London published a further volume for Bates of 12 additional Uncle Silas stories, accompanied by 25 more Ardizzone drawings, under the title Sugar for the Horse.