Alan Sillitoe



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

Life
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 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. 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.

Pensioned off at 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 his partner, American poet Ruth Fainlight, 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 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.

He married Ruth Fainlight, with whom 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 DLitt 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)."

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 audience was never achieved despite strong efforts. The film was blocked by the late 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.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997.

Death
On 25 April 2010 Sillitoe died at Charing Cross Hospital in London of cancer.

Fiction

 * 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 000717327X; Harper Perennial (US), 2005. ISBN 0007173288; ISBN 9780007173280

Poetry

 * 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

 * 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

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

Compilations

 * 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

 * 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 0006550738
 * New and Collected Stories, Carroll and Graf, 2005. ISBN 078671476X

Autobiography

 * 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 0002555700, ISBN 9780002555708

Translated

 * 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

Film

 * 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)