Alan Sillitoe, who has died of cancer aged 82, was one of the most important British writers of the postwar era. He is one of England’s best novelist, children's book writer, playwright and social critic. He introduced in the post-World War II British fiction realistically portraying working-class heroes. Best known for his novels, Sillitoe also published children's books, poetry, plays, and an autobiography.
Background
Ethnicity:
His father and mother, Christopher Sillitoe and Sabina Sillitoe, were English.
Alan Sillitoe was born on March 4, 1928 in Nottingham, England, the son of Christopher Sillitoe and his wife Sabina. Sillitoe's childhood was shadowed by the financial problems of the family, but he began to plan his career as a writer.However, his first semi-fictional tale about his wild cousins was burned by his mother for being too revealing.
Education
Sillitoe left school at 14 with no qualifications.
Career
At the age of 14, he left school and worked in a number of jobs in Nottingham factories, including a bicycle factory from 1942 to 1946. He served in the Royal Air Force, where he was a wireless operator. After returning from Malaya, he was discovered to have tuberculosis. Sillitoe spent sixteen months in an RAF hospital. During this period he began to write again and read intensively. Pensioned off at 21 on 45 shillings at week, he lived in France and Spain for seven years in an attempt to recover.
Fiction:
Travels in Nihilon,1971
Scribners,1972
Social novels:
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning,1958
Key to the Door,1961
Birthday,2001
The General,1960
Road To Volgograd,1964
The Death of William Posters,1965
A Tree on Fire, 1967
A Start in Life,1970
Life Goes On,1985
Raw Material, 1972
The Widower's Son,1976
The Flame of Life,1974
The Storyteller,1979
Her Victory,1982
The Lost Flying Boat,1983
Down from the Hill,1984
Out of the Whirlpool,1987
The Open Door,1989
Last Loves,1990
Leonard's War,1991
Snowstop,1993
The Broken Chariot,1998
The German Numbers Woman,2000
A Man of His Time,2004
Collections of stories:
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner,1959
The Ragman’s Daughter and Other Stories,1963
Guzman, Go Home, and Other Stories,1968
Men, Women and Children,1973
The Second Chance and Other Stories,1981
The Far Side of the Street: Fifteen Short Stories,1988
Collected Stories,1995
Alligator Playground: A Collection of Short Stories,1997
New and Collected Stories,2005
Books of poems:
Without Beer or Bread,1957
The Rats and Other Poems,1960
Falling Out of Love and Other Poems,1964
Shaman: And Other Poems,1968
Love in the Environs of Voronezh and Other Poems,1968
From Snow on the North Side of Lucifer,1979
Snow on the North Side of Lucifer: Poems,1979
Poems for Shakespeare 7,1979
Tides and Stone Walls: Poems,1986
Three Poems,1988
Сollected articles:
Mountains and Caverns: Selected Essays,1975
Words Broadsheet Nineteen,1975
The Interview,1976
Israel: Poems on a Hebrew Theme,1981
Alan Sillitoe’s Nottinghamshire,1987
Autobiographical books:
Life Without Armour,1995
Gadfly in Russia,2007
Screenings:
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning,1960
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner,1962
Counterpoint,1967
The Ragman's Daughter,1972
Pit Strike,1977
Achievements
Works
book
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Key to the Door
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
Religion
"Angry Young Men" (1950s)
Politics
Sillitoe was a mild-mannered man who remained committed to political causes and social justice throughout his life. A workaholic, he relaxed by travelling, taking bicycle rides in the Kent countryside and tuning into foreign stations on his radio transmitter.
Views
"new existentialism"
Quotations:
“All I'm out for is a good time - all the rest is propaganda.”
― Alan Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
“Well, it's a good life and a good world, all said and done, if you don't weaken.”
― Alan Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
“I was neither glad nor unhappy to see her, but maybe that's what shock does, because I was surprised, that I will say.”
― Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner
Interests
Geography, navigation, travel.
Connections
In 1959 Alan Sillitoe married an American poet Ruth Fainlight in 1959. They had a sun, David Sillitoe, and a daughter, Susan Sillitoe.