Alan Sillitoe
born March 4, 1928, Nottingham,
Nottinghamshire, Eng.
died April 25, 2010, London
writer, one of the so-called Angry Young
Men, whose brash and angry accounts of
working-class life injected new vigour into
post-World War II British fiction.
The son of a tannery worker, Sillitoe
worked in factories from the age of 14. In
1946 he joined the air force, and for two
years he served as a radio operator in
Malaya. After his return to England, X-rays
revealed that he had contracted
tuberculosis, and he spent several months in
a hospital. Between 1952 and 1958 he lived
in France and Spain. In Majorca he met the
poet Robert Graves, who suggested that he
write about Nottingham, and Sillitoe began
work on his first published novel, Saturday
Night and Sunday Morning (1958; filmed
1960). It was an immediate success, telling
the story of a rude and amoral young
labourer for whom drink and sex on Saturday
night provide the only relief from the
oppression of the working life.
From his short-story collection The
Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
(1959), Sillitoe helped adapt the title
story into a film (1962). Later novels, such
as The Death of William Posters (1965) and
The Widower’s Son (1977), deal with more
intellectual working-class characters. In
2001 he published Birthday, a sequel to
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Notable
short-story collections are The Ragman’s
Daughter (1963; filmed 1974), Men, Women,
and Children (1974), and The Second Chance
(1980).
Sillitoe also wrote children’s books,
poetry, and plays while continuing as a
novelist. Life Without Armour, an
autobiography, was published in 1995.
