David Storey was born in 1933 in Wakefield, and studied at the Slade School of Art. He wrote fifteen plays and eleven novels, including This Sporting Life which was made into a film starring Richard Harris. His work won many prizes, including the Macmillan Fiction Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, the Faber Memorial Prize and, in 1976, the Booker Prize for Saville. He died in 2017.

"If you haven't read David Storey's 1976 winner Saville read it at once, it is the best of all the Bookers" Observer "A tremendous novel" The Economist "Saville" is a splendid novel, replete with virtues beyond its appeal to those otherwise undiscriminating readers who demand stories about nice people." -- Peter S. Prescott Newsweek "Mesmerically readable... A revelation" The Times "A marvellousl evocation of place and character... This is a book made more than usually remarkable by its intensity of feeling" Daily Telegraph