Background
John Braine was born in Bingley, near Bradford, Yorkshire.
(Xavier Flynn is the pious agent of John Braine's novel of...)
Xavier Flynn is the pious agent of John Braine's novel of treachery within the British Secret Service. A devout Roman Catholic, Flynn belongs to a group of agents hired to dispose of England's interior enemies. Flynn's personal assignment is to search out and eliminate the members of an undercover Trotskyite group, whose survival depends on sabotaging a family-owned, credit-to-private-enterprise motorcycle factory. "Braine is a smooth, sophisticated writer...THE PIOUS AGENT is an exciting and stimulating read."(The New York Times)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0755102568/?tag=2022091-20
(Jim Seathwaite has come a long way from his humble Lancas...)
Jim Seathwaite has come a long way from his humble Lancashire beginnings and has all the trappings of success. Yet he is faced with ruin - for Jim is inadequate in an area where his wife exercises total control. The author explores the delicate web of tensions and fears that underlie a marriage.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0755102576/?tag=2022091-20
(The brilliant author of ROOM AT THE TOP probes the obsess...)
The brilliant author of ROOM AT THE TOP probes the obsessive passion of a young man for a vital older woman and the painful ordeal which must follow--the exorcism of desire, the shattering of bonds, the shaking off of a profound and powerful influence. "A masterful exploration of the many forms of love. Compulsively readable...shows us what an outstandingly good writer he is; flashes of descriptive power, subtleties of insight and intuition abound." (The Sunday Times, London)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/075510255X/?tag=2022091-20
(This is an intriguing novel of romance, love and possibly...)
This is an intriguing novel of romance, love and possibly loss: "Vincent Dungarvan's mother wants him to be a priest. For a north-country Catholic family this would be a fine thing and he himself half thinks that he has a vocation. He is a reserved young man, a schoolmaster, and at thirty he has never been in love with a woman. This is not only a dramatic and beautifully told story. It is also a study of the subtle and changing ties between people of a whole world within a world - the north-country Catholics, mostly the descendants of Irish immigrants, whose society still has a character and pungency of its own. Individually, the characters are drawn with precision and love - the possessive mother, the old grandmother, the older brothers and their families, above all Laura, the girl whom Vincent loves".
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006D6XAW/?tag=2022091-20
John Braine was born in Bingley, near Bradford, Yorkshire.
Braine is usually listed among the Angry Young Men, a loosely defined group of English writers who emerged on the literary scene in the 1950s. He left Saint Bede"s Grammar School at 16 and worked in a shop, a laboratory and a factory before becoming, after the war, a librarian. Although he wrote 12 works of fiction, Braine is chiefly remembered today for his first novel, Room at the Top (1957).
He stated that his favourite author was Guy de Maupassant and that Room at the Top was based on Belorussian Ami, but that "the critics didn"t pick it up".
There was possibly more to pick up. Room at the Top was turned into a successful 1959 film, with Laurence Harvey as Joe Lampton and featuring an Oscar–winning performance by Simone Signoret.
In September 2012, British Broadcasting Corporation television broadcast a two-part dramatisation that had been delayed because of a dispute over copyright. Matthew McNulty was in the lead role He wrote several more novels, including Life at the Top, a sequel to Room at the Top.
His 1968 novel The Crying Game is set in London and captures some of the atmosphere of the "Swinging Sixties".
(lieutenant is not related to the 1992 film of the same name). His 1974 book Writing a Novel was a guide for aspiring novelists. Braine was mildly left-wing in his youth, but like his contemporaries (and fellow "Angry Young Men") Amis and John Wain, he later moved to the political right, and supported America"s involvement in the Vietnam War.
In 1967, Braine, Robert Conquest, Amis and several others signed a controversial letter to The Times titled "Backing for United States. Policies in Vietnam", supporting the United States government in Vietnam.
Braine was married to Helen Wood and had four children. He died in 1986 at age 64.
(The brilliant author of ROOM AT THE TOP probes the obsess...)
(This is an intriguing novel of romance, love and possibly...)
(Jim Seathwaite has come a long way from his humble Lancas...)
(Xavier Flynn is the pious agent of John Braine's novel of...)
(Light wear to boards. Content is clean and bright. Good D...)