Alan Sillitoe
Alan Sillitoe on 10 May 2009
Born	(1928-03-04)4 March 1928 Nottingham, England
Died	25 April 2010(2010-04-25) (aged 82) London, England
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	British
Spouse(s)	Ruth Fainlight
Influences Robert Graves

Alan Sillitoe (4 March 1928 – 25 April 2010)^[1][2] was an English writer and one of the "Angry Young Men" of the 1950s.^[3][4][5] He disliked the label, as did most of the other writers to whom it was applied.

Biography[link]

Sillitoe was born in Nottingham, to working class parents. Like Arthur Seaton, the anti-hero of his first novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, his father worked at the Raleigh Bicycle Company factory.

He left school at the age of 14 and worked at the Raleigh factory for the next four years, spending his free time reading.^[6] He then joined the Royal Air Force, serving as a wireless operator in Malaya. After returning to England, he was discovered to have tuberculosis and spent 16 months in an RAF hospital.^[7][8]

Pensioned off at age 21 on 45 shillings a week, he lived in France and Spain for seven years in an attempt to recover. In 1955, while living in Mallorca with American poet Ruth Fainlight, whom he married in 1959,^[9] and in contact with the poet Robert Graves, Sillitoe started work on Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, which was published in 1958. Influenced in part by the stripped-down prose of Ernest Hemingway, the book conveys the attitudes and situation of a young factory worker faced with the inevitable end of his youthful philandering. As with John Osborne's Look Back in Anger and John Braine's Room at the Top, the novel's real subject was the disillusionment of postwar Britain, and the lack of opportunities for the working class. It was adapted as a film by Karel Reisz in 1960, with Albert Finney as Arthur Seaton.

Sillitoe's story The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, which concerns the rebellion of a borstal boy with a talent for running, won the Hawthornden Prize in 1959. It was also adapted to film, in 1962, this time directed by Tony Richardson and starring Tom Courtenay.

With Fainlight he had a child, David; Susan was later adopted. He lived in Kent and London.

In 1990, Sillitoe was awarded an honorary degree from Nottingham Trent University. The city's older Russell Group university, the University of Nottingham, also awarded him an honorary D.Litt in 1994; in 2006, his best-known play was staged at the university's Lakeside Arts theatre in an in-house production.

Sillitoe wrote many novels, and several volumes of poetry. His 1995 autobiography, Life Without Armour, was critically acclaimed on publication, and offers a view into his squalid childhood. In an interview Sillitoe claimed, "A writer, if he manages to earn a living at what he's doing – even if it's a very poor living, acquires some of the attributes of the old-fashioned gentleman (if I can be so silly)."^[10]

In 2007 Gadfly in Russia, an account of his travels in Russia spanning 40 years, was published. In 2008 London Books republished A Start in Life as part of its London Classics series and to mark the author's 80th birthday. Sillitoe appeared on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs on 25 January 2009.

His long-held desire for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning to be remade for a contemporary filmgoing audience was never achieved despite strong efforts. The film was blocked by Natasha Richardson, who inherited the rights to the book from her father. Danny Brocklehurst was set to adapt the book and Sillitoe gave his blessing to the project. The Richardson estate and Woodfall films refused this request.^{[citation needed]}

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997.^[11]

Death[link]

On 25 April 2010 Sillitoe died at Charing Cross Hospital in London of cancer.^[8][12]

Fiction[link]

• Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, London: Allen, 1958; New York: Knopf, 1959. New edition with an introduction by Sillitoe, commentary and notes by David Craig. In the Longman edition (1976) there is a sequence of Nottingham photographs, and stills from the film, Harlow.
• The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, London: Allen, 1959; New York: Knopf, 1960
• The General, London: Allen, 1960; New York: Knopf, 1961
• Key to the Door, London: Allen, 1961; New York: Knopf, 1962; reprinted, with a new preface by Sillitoe, London: Allen, 1978
• Road To Volgograd, London: Allen, 1964; New York: Knopf, 1964
• The Death of William Posters, London: Allen, 1965; New York: Knopf, 1965
• The City Adventures of Marmalade Jim, London: Macmillan, 1967; Toronto: Macmillan, 1967; revised edition, London: Robson, 1977
• A Tree on Fire, London: Macmillan, 1967; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968
• A Sillitoe Selection: Eight Short Stories,. London: Longman, 1968
• A Start in Life, London: Allen, 1970; New York: Scribners, 1971
• Travels in Nihilon, London: Allen, 1971; New York: Scribners, 1972
• Men, Women and Children, London: Allen, 1973; New York: Scribners, 1974
• From Canto Two of The Rats, Wittersham, Kent: Alan Sillitoe, 1973
• Somme, London: Steam Press, 1974. In Steam Press Portfolio, no. 2. 50 copies
• The Flame of Life, London: Allen, 1974
• Down to the Bone, Exeter: Wheaton, 1976
• Day-Dream Communiqué, Knotting, Bedfordshire: Sceptre Press, 1977. 150 copies
• Big John and the Stars, London: Robson, 1977
• The Widower's Son, Allen, 1976; New York: Harper & Row, 1977
• The Incredible Fencing Fleas, London: Robson, 1978. Illus. Mike Wilks.
• The Storyteller, London: Allen, 1979; New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980.
• Marmalade Jim at the Farm, London: Robson, 1980
• More Lucifer, Knotting, Bedfordshire: Martin Booth, 1980. 125 copies
• Her Victory, London: Granada, 1982; New York: Watts, 1982
• The Lost Flying Boat, London: Granada, 1983; Boston: Little, Brown, 1983
• The Saxon Shore Way: From Gravesend to Rye, by Sillitoe and Fay Godwin. London: Hutchinson, 1983
• Down from the Hill, London: Granada, 1984
• Marmalade Jim and the Fox, London: Robson, 1984
• Life Goes On, London: Granada, 1985
• Out of the Whirlpool. London: Hutchinson, 1987
• Every Day of the Week: An Alan Sillitoe Reader. Introd. John Sawkins. London: W. H. Allen, 1987.
• The Open Door, London: Grafton/Collins, 1989
• Last Loves, London: Grafton, 1990; Boston: Chivers, 1991
• Leonard's War A Love Story. London: HarperCollins, 1991
• Shylock the Writer, London: Turret Bookshop, 1991
• The Mentality of the Picaresque Hero, London: Turret Bookshop, 1993, Turret Papers, no. 2. 500 copies
• Snowstop, London: HarperCollins, 1993
• Life Without Armour. London: HarperCollins, 1995. (autobiography)
• The Broken Chariot, London: Flamingo/HarperCollins, 1998
• The German Numbers Woman, London: Flamingo/HarperCollins, 1999
• Birthday, London: Flamingo/HarperCollins, 2001
• A Man of His Time, Flamingo (UK), 2004, ISBN 0-00-717327-X; Harper Perennial (US), 2005. ISBN 0-00-717328-8; ISBN 978-0-00-717328-0

Film[link]

• The Ragman's Daughter (1972) (based on novel)
• Counterpoint (1967) (based on novel The General)
• The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) (screenplay based on own short story)
• Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) (screenplay based on own novel)

Translations[link]

• Chopin’s Winter in Majorca 1838–1839, by Luis Ripall, translated by Sillitoe. Palma de Majorca: Mossen Alcover, 1955
• Chopin’s Pianos: The Pleyel in Majorca, by Luis Ripall, translated by Sillitoe. Palma de Majorca: Mossen Alcover, 1958
• All Citizens Are Soldiers (Fuente Ovejuna): A Play in Two Acts, by Lope de Vega translated by Sillitoe and Ruth Fainlight. London: Macmillan, 1969; Chester Springs, PA: Dufour, 1969
• Poems for Shakespeare, volume 7, edited and translated by Sillitoe and Ruth Fainlight. London: Bear Gardens Museum & Arts Centre, 1980

Poetry[link]

• Without Beer or Bread, Dulwich Village: Outposts, 1957
• The Rats and Other Poems, London: Allen, 1960
• Falling Out of Love and Other Poems, London; Allen, 1964; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964
• Shaman: And Other Poems", Turret, 1968 Limited ed. of 500 copies, 100 copies signed and numbered
• Love in the Environs of Voronezh and Other Poems, London: Macmillan, 1968; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969.
• Poems, by Sillitoe, Ruth Fainlight and Ted Hughes; London: Rainbow Press, 1971. 300 copies
• Barbarians and Other Poems, London: Turret Books, 1973. 500 copies
• Storm: New Poems, London: Allen, 1974
• From Snow on the North Side of Lucifer, Knotting, Bedfordshire: Sceptre Press, 1979. 150 copies
• Snow on the North Side of Lucifer: Poems, London: Allen, 1979
• Poems for Shakespeare 7, Bear Gardens Museum and Arts Centre, 1979 Limited to 500 copies all copies are numbered
• Sun Before Departure: Poems, 1974–1982, London: Granada, 1984
• Tides and Stone Walls: Poems, with photographs by Victor Bowley; London: Grafton, 1986
• Three Poems, Child Okefurd, Dorset: Words Press, 1988. 200 copies
• Collected Poems, London: HarperCollins, 1993

Essays[link]

• Mountains and Caverns: Selected Essays, London: Allen, 1975
• Words Broadsheet Nineteen, by Sillitoe and Ruth Fainlight. Bramley, Surrey: Words Press, 1975. Broadside
• “The Interview”, London: The 35s (Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry), 1976
• Israel: Poems on a Hebrew Theme, with drawings by Ralph Steadman; London: Steam Press, 1981 98 copies.
• Alan Sillitoe’s Nottinghamshire, with photographs by David Sillitoe. London: Grafton, 1987

Plays[link]

• Three Plays, London: Allen, 1978 Contains The Slot-Machine, The Interview, Pit Strike

Compilations[link]

• Every Day of the Week: An Alan Sillitoe Reader, with an introduction by John Sawkins London: Allen, 1987
• Collected Stories, London: Flamingo, 1995

Collections of stories[link]

• The Ragman’s Daughter and Other Stories, London: Allen, 1963; New York: Knopf, 1964
• Guzman, Go Home, and Other Stories, London: Macmillan, 1968; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969; reprinted, with a new preface by Sillitoe, London; Allen, 1979
• Men, Women and Children, London: Allen, 1973; New York: Scribners, 1974
• The Second Chance and Other Stories, London: Cape, 1981; New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981
• The Far Side of the Street: Fifteen Short Stories, London: Allen, 1988
• Collected Stories. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.
• Alligator Playground: A Collection of Short Stories, Flamingo, 1997, ISBN 0-00-655073-8
• New and Collected Stories, Carroll and Graf, 2005. ISBN 0-7867-1476-X

Autobiography[link]

• Raw Material, London: Allen, 1972; New York: Scribners, 1973; rev. ed., London: Pan Books, 1974; further revised, London: Star Books, 1978; further revised, London: Allen, 1979
• Life Without Armour, (HarperCollins, 1995) ISBN 0-00-255570-0, ISBN 978-0-00-255570-8

Further reading[link]

• Gerard, David E. and H. W. Wilson. Alan Sillitoe: A Bibliography, Mansell, 1986 (UK) ISBN 0-7201-1829-8; Meckler, 1988 (US) ISBN 0-88736-104-8.
• Penner, Allen R. Alan Sillitoe, Twayne, 1972.
• Vaverka, Ronald Dee. Commitment As Art: A Marxist Critique of a Selection of Alan Sillitoe's Political Fiction. (1978 Dissertation, Uppsala Univ.)
• Atherton, Stanley S. Alan Sillitoe: A Critical Assessment, W. H. Allen, 1979. ISBN 0-491-02496-7
• Craig, David. The Roots of Sillitoe's Fiction. In The British Working-Class Novel in the Twentieth Century, ed. Jeremy Hawthorn, Edward Arnold, 1984. ISBN 0-7131-6415-8
• Hitchcock, Peter. Working-Class Fiction in Theory and Practice: A Reading of Alan Sillitoe, UMI Research Press, 1989. ISBN 0-8357-1976-6
• Hanson, Gillian Mary. Understanding Alan Sillitoe, Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1999. ISBN 1-57003-219-X
• Sawkins, John. The Long Apprenticeship: Alienation in the Early Work of Alan Sillitoe, Peter Lang, 2001. ISBN 3-906764-50-8
• Bradford, Richard. The Life of a Long-distance Writer: The Biography of Alan Sillitoe, Petero Owen, 2008. ISBN 978-0-7206-1317-9

References[link]

• Reuters

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Alan Sillitoe

• Ramsay Wood's 1971 interview 'Alan Sillitoe: The Image Shedding the Author', Four Quarters, La Salle University, Philadelphia, on Robert Twigger's blog 6 August 2011 [1]
• LeftLion interview with Alan Sillitoe
• LeftLion obituary for Alan Sillitoe
• The start of Alan Sillitoe : How Sillitoe stood apart from the tradition of other Northern novelists going soft and successful in the South; Times online 1 October 2008
• Contemporary Writers: Alan Sillitoe
• Guardian article, 2004
• Guardian article, 2011
• Alan Sillitoe describes his life as a smoker prior to the England smoking ban
• The White Horse Public House made famous in 'Saturday Night & Sunday Morning'
• London Books
• Lastingtribute.co.uk, online tribute page
• Alan Sillitoe at the Internet Movie Database

The "angry young men" were a group of mostly working and middle class British playwrights and novelists who became prominent in the 1950s. The group's leading members included John Osborne and Kingsley Amis. The phrase was originally coined by the Royal Court Theatre's press officer to promote John Osborne's Look Back in Anger. It is thought to be derived from the autobiography of Leslie Paul, founder of the Woodcraft Folk, whose Angry Young Man was published in 1951. Following the success of the Osborne play, the label was later applied by British newspapers to describe young British writers who were characterised by a disillusionment with traditional English society. The term, always imprecise, began to have less meaning over the years as the writers to whom it was originally applied became more divergent, and many of them dismissed the label as useless.

John Osborne[link]

The playwright John Osborne was the archetypal example, and his signature play Look Back in Anger (1956) attracted attention to a style of drama contrasting strongly with the genteel and understated works of Terence Rattigan which had been in fashion. Osborne's The Entertainer (1957) secured his reputation, with Laurence Olivier playing the protagonist Archie Rice.

Definition and divisions[link]

As a catchphrase, the term was applied to a large, incoherently defined group, and was rejected by most of the writers to whom it was applied; see for instance "Answer to a Letter from Joe" by John Wain (Essays on Literature and Ideas, 1963). Publisher Tom Maschler, who edited a collection of political-literary essays by the "Angries" (Declaration, 1957), commented: "(T)hey do not belong to a united movement. Far from it; they attack one another directly or indirectly in these pages. Some were even reluctant to appear between the same covers with others whose views they violently oppose."^[1]

Their political views were usually seen as identifying with the left, sometimes anarchistic, and they described social alienation of different kinds. They also often expressed their critical views on society as a whole, criticising certain behaviours or groups in different ways. On television, their writings were often expressed in plays in anthology drama series such as Armchair Theatre (ITV, 1956-68) and The Wednesday Play (BBC, 1964-70); this leads to a confusion with the kitchen sink drama category of the early 1960s.

It should also be noted that throughout the late 1950s and into the 1960s, the Angries often met at or were nurtured by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and through this venue other such emerging playwrights as Edward Bond and Wole Soyinka were exposed to the AYM movement directly.

The New University Wits (a term applied by William Van O'Connor in his 1963 study The New University Wits and the End of Modernism), refers to Oxbridge malcontents who explored the contrast between their upper-class university privilege and their middle-class upbringings. They included Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin, and John Wain, all of whom were also part of the poetic circle known as The Movement.

Also included in the Angry Young Men was a small group of young existentialist philosophers led by Colin Wilson and also including Stuart Holroyd and Bill Hopkins.^[2]

Outside of these subgroupings, the "Angries" included writers mostly of lower-class origin concerned with their political and economic aspirations. They included John Osborne (whose play Look Back in Anger is a basic "Angries" text), Harold Pinter, John Braine, Arnold Wesker and Alan Sillitoe. Some of these (e.g. Pinter) were left-wing and some (e.g. Braine) were right-wing. William Cooper, the early model AYM, though Cambridge-educated was a "provincial" writer in his frankness and material and is included in this group.

Cross-currents in the late 1950s[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Friendships, rivalries, and acknowledgments of common literary aims within each of these groups could be intense (the relationship between Amis and Larkin is considered one of the great literary friendships of the 20th century). But the writers in each group tended to view the other groups with bewilderment and incomprehension. Observers and critics could find no common thread between them all. They were contemporaries by age. They were not of the upper-class establishment, nor were they protegés of existing literary circles. It was essentially a male "movement". Shelagh Delaney, author of A Taste of Honey (1958), was described as an "angry young woman" (see Arthur Marwick (1998) The Sixties).

The perception of them as "angry" outsiders was the one point of coherence. It all had something to do with English "provincialism" asserting itself, in a world where James Joyce (an Irishman) and Dylan Thomas (a Welshman) had taken the literary high ground. Feelings of frustration and exclusion from the centre and the Establishment were taken up, as common sense surrogates for the Freud and Sartre of the highbrows. In a negative description, they tended to avoid radical experimentalism in their literary style; they were not modernists by technique. That much fitted in with the overlapping Movement poets, identified as such a year or two before, also a journalistic label.

Associated writers[link]

• Edward Bond
• John Braine
• Michael Hastings
• Thomas Hinde
• John Osborne
• Harold Pinter
• Alan Sillitoe
• Kenneth Tynan
• Arnold Wesker

Other media[link]

In the song "Where Are They Now", on the 1973 album Preservation Act 1 by The Kinks, the following lines appear: "Where have all the angry young men gone?/ Barstow and Osborne, Waterhouse and Sillitoe/ Where on earth did they all go?"

See also[link]

• British New Wave, AKA the Angry Young Man film genre- a British film genre of the 1960s, featuring working class heroes and left-wing themes. [1]

• Angry Young Men, ltd. An American puppet troupe of mad scientists, impresarios and drinking buddies, creators of Night of the Living Dead, The Puppet Show! [2]

References[link]

• Success Stories (1988) by Harry Ritchie, a well-documented history of the AYM as a journalistic phenomenon
• The Angry Young Men: A Literary Comedy of the 1950s (2002) by Humphrey Carpenter, an anecdotal group biography
• The Angry Years (2007) by Colin Wilson, personal history and detailed accounts of many other figures attached to the label