Alan Sillitoe – författare

This cult classic of working class life in post-war Nottingham follows the exploits of rebellious factory worker Arthur Seaton and is introduced by Richard Bradford.Working all day at a lathe leaves Arthur Seaton with energy to spare in the evenings. A hard-drinking, hard-fighting hooligan, he knows what he wants, and he's sharp enough to get it.Before long, his carryings-on with a couple of married women become the stuff of local gossip. But then one evening he meets a young girl and life begins to look less simple…First published in 1958, ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’ achieved instant critical acclaim and helped to establish Alan Sillitoe as one of the greatest British writers of his generation. The film of the novel, starring Albert Finney, transformed British cinema and was much imitated.

A superb creation of love, life and class in the post-war world.When Herbert Thurgarton-Strang was seven, his parents – as loving, as doting as any parents of their generation – took him away from India and left him in a boarding school in England which had everything to recommend it except pity. Through the stifling, alarming years which follow, Herbert is held together by the notion of revenge on those loving parents, and by the knowledge that, over there, a new world beckons.And when he’s seventeen, he steals away from school, steals away from Herbert, becomes a different boy; becomes, in Nottingham, Bert the lathe-worker, Bert the womaniser, Bert the soldier, Bert the sometime bruiser. Plunged into the louche life, he bobs like a cork, but eventually Bert/Herbert does lay his demons to rest.

From one of England’s greatest living writers comes a new collection of exquisitely formed stories set in life’s great playground.Relationships – clandestine and legitimate – are the theme: boorish chaps and their stalwart women ululate and hum; marriages and infidelities tick-tock and tick over; Fitzrovian passion flares; strong men turn to drink. Love, sex, loss, are captured in Mr Sillitoe’s inimitable style.As well as the general theme of the union of the sexes, we have inspired insights into birth, boyhood, bereavement and aloneness in a collection of perfectly narrated observations, in which the reader participates in each extraordinary experience.

A top-rate novel of drugs, love and treachery from an author at the height of his powers.Blind Howard, an ex-RAF veteran, possesses an acute sense of awareness, and can see almost better than the sighted. Morse code patterns his universe and keeps his mind tuned sharp to the big and sometimes bad world. Laura, his ever-doting wife, is loveliness personified. Things start to change when he meets the nefarious Richard. Morse is the common denominator of the alliance, but before long Howard’s world of dots and dashes, dits and dahs takes on new darker horizons when he clicks into a drugs racket which means leaving his caring wife for a wild voyage in search of a woman whose voice he has fallen in love with; and a sea-journey with maverick sailors on a heroin heist.

The sequel to ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’.‘Birthday’ is the sequel to Alan Sillitoe’s classic novel of the 1950s, ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’.Four decades on from the novel which was at the forefront of the new wave of British literature, we rediscover the Seaton brothers: older, certainly; wiser – possibly not.Arthur and Brian Seaton, one with an ailing wife, one with an emotional knapsack of failure and success, are on their way to Jenny’s seventieth birthday party. Jenny and Brian had years ago experimented with sex – semi-clothed, stealthy, with the bonus of fear. Arthur, of course, had cut a winning swathe through the married and unmarried women of Nottinghamshire.Life has changed. But there is still pleasure; and still pain.Alan Sillitoe is undoubtedly one of the greatest English writers of our time, and, indeed, one of the most influential.

A wonderful historical novel from one of our best loved and most prolific writersAs a young man Ernest Burton was a bold and reckless journeyman blacksmith, seducing all young girls he comes across. We watch him grow to become a master Blacksmith, and a tyrannical father of eight who refuses even to try to remain faithful to the woman he married and who reigns over his young family with an iron fist, instilling in his sons and daughters a mixture of fear and hatred of him. Burton is an extraordinary fictional creation – a bully who shows no mercy in his relentless terrorism of his sons, he can also be effortlessly charming, with a magnetic attraction that effects all he meets.Written in the sparse, plain language that Sillitoe has made his own, A Man of His Time is a mesmerising portrait of an extraordinary individual, aware that he is, in many ways, the last of a dying breed. It's a rich, absorbing, wonderfully readable novel that covers decades and crosses generations, depicting with singular brilliance an England poised on the brink of change.

From the author of ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’ come stories of hardship and hope in post-war Britain.The title story in this classic collection tells of Smith, a defiant young rebel, inhabiting the no-man's land of institutionalised Borstal. As his steady jog-trot rhythm transports him over an unrelenting, frost-bitten earth, he wonders why, for whom and for what he is running.A groundbreaking work, ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner’ captured the grim isolation of the working class in the English Midlands when it was first published in 1960s. But Sillitoe’s depiction of petty crime and deep-seated anger in industrial and desperate cities remains as potent today as it was almost half a century ago.

From the author of `Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’ come stories of hardship and hope in post-war Britain.The title story in this classic collection tells of Smith, a defiant young rebel, inhabiting the no-man's land of institutionalised Borstal. As his steady jog-trot rhythm transports him over an unrelenting, frost-bitten earth, he wonders why, for whom and for what he is running.A groundbreaking work, `The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner’ captured the grim isolation of the working class in the English Midlands when it was first published in 1960s. But Sillitoe’s depiction of petty crime and deep-seated anger in industrial and desperate cities remains as potent today as it was almost half a century ago.

This cult classic of working class life in post-war Nottingham follows the exploits of rebellious factory worker Arthur Seaton and is introduced by Richard Bradford.Working all day at a lathe leaves Arthur Seaton with energy to spare in the evenings. A hard-drinking, hard-fighting hooligan, he knows what he wants, and he's sharp enough to get it.Before long, his carryings-on with a couple of married women become the stuff of local gossip. But then one evening he meets a young girl and life begins to look less simple…First published in 1958, `Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’ achieved instant critical acclaim and helped to establish Alan Sillitoe as one of the greatest British writers of his generation. The film of the novel, starring Albert Finney, transformed British cinema and was much imitated.

The sequel to `Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’.`Birthday’ is the sequel to Alan Sillitoe’s classic novel of the 1950s, `Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’.Four decades on from the novel which was at the forefront of the new wave of British literature, we rediscover the Seaton brothers: older, certainly; wiser – possibly not.Arthur and Brian Seaton, one with an ailing wife, one with an emotional knapsack of failure and success, are on their way to Jenny’s seventieth birthday party. Jenny and Brian had years ago experimented with sex – semi-clothed, stealthy, with the bonus of fear. Arthur, of course, had cut a winning swathe through the married and unmarried women of Nottinghamshire.Life has changed. But there is still pleasure; and still pain.Alan Sillitoe is undoubtedly one of the greatest English writers of our time, and, indeed, one of the most influential.

From one of England’s greatest living writers comes a collection of exquisitely formed stories set in life’s great playground.Relationships – clandestine and legitimate – are the theme: boorish chaps and their stalwart women ululate and hum; marriages and infidelities tick-tock and tick over; Fitzrovian passion flares; strong men turn to drink. Love, sex, loss, are captured in Mr Sillitoe’s inimitable style.As well as the general theme of the union of the sexes, we have inspired insights into birth, boyhood, bereavement and aloneness in a collection of perfectly narrated observations, in which the reader participates in each extraordinary experience.

A top-rate novel of drugs, love and treachery from an author at the height of his powers.Blind Howard, an ex-RAF veteran, possesses an acute sense of awareness, and can see almost better than the sighted. Morse code patterns his universe and keeps his mind tuned sharp to the big and sometimes bad world. Laura, his ever-doting wife, is loveliness personified. Things start to change when he meets the nefarious Richard. Morse is the common denominator of the alliance, but before long Howard’s world of dots and dashes, dits and dahs takes on new darker horizons when he clicks into a drugs racket which means leaving his caring wife for a wild voyage in search of a woman whose voice he has fallen in love with; and a sea-journey with maverick sailors on a heroin heist.

A wonderful historical novel from one of our best loved and most prolific writersAs a young man Ernest Burton was a bold and reckless journeyman blacksmith, seducing all young girls he comes across. We watch him grow to become a master Blacksmith, and a tyrannical father of eight who refuses even to try to remain faithful to the woman he married and who reigns over his young family with an iron fist, instilling in his sons and daughters a mixture of fear and hatred of him. Burton is an extraordinary fictional creation – a bully who shows no mercy in his relentless terrorism of his sons, he can also be effortlessly charming, with a magnetic attraction that effects all he meets.Written in the sparse, plain language that Sillitoe has made his own, A Man of His Time is a mesmerising portrait of an extraordinary individual, aware that he is, in many ways, the last of a dying breed. It's a rich, absorbing, wonderfully readable novel that covers decades and crosses generations, depicting with singular brilliance an England poised on the brink of change.

Alan Sillitoe (1928-2010) was an award-winning poet and one of the leading British novelists of the twentieth century. He wrote more than fifty books, establishing an enduring critical and popular success with his 1958 novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, which set a new direction in writing about the reality of working-class lives in post-war Britain. His stories of working-class life earned him a reputation as one of the "angry young men" of a new generation of writers. His poetry, however, revealed his own inner life in a way that he found impossible to do in fiction. Presented here are Sillitoe's poems that present the world as he saw it. Using a storyteller's skill, he brought to life the people and places that captured his imagination and took him on a search for meaning. Fascist graffiti scrawled by an unseen hand on a wall in Irkutsk, three sons standing in silence by the grave of their father--this is Sillitoe's world as seen with his poet's eye, a vision that is at the same time clear and precise, politically engaged, fiercely intelligent, and deeply personal. Drawn from his eight volumes of poetry, this selection has been chosen by his wife, the poet Ruth Fainlight.

A portrait of individual and communal struggles to maintain authenticity and revolutionary fervor in 1960s England from award-winning, bestselling author Alan SillitoeThe final installment of the William Posters Trilogy revolves around the plights and foibles of the Handley family commune, which set up camp at the home of the wealthy Myra Bassingfield. There, painter Albert Handley is pursuing a whirlwind existence of art, sex, and chaotic domestic life. Of his seven children, four are giving him particular grief. His eldest son, Cuthbert, has been kicked out of theological college; his eldest daughter, Mandy, is pregnant by her unstable husband; and two of his younger sons, Richard and Adam, are pillaging army manuals for subversive and revolutionary ends. To top it all off, Myra''s lover, Frank Dawley, has returned from gunrunning in Algeria—and brought along his wife and two kids from Nottingham to live in the Buckinghamshire kibbutz. Collective cohabitation soon reveals its downfalls. And when a young Spanish anarchist arrives with assassination on her mind, her trunk full of notebooks may condemn Frank for a sin committed in the African desert. As the community hangs by a thread, the very notion of revolution comes under scrutiny, begging the question: Can the fire of life burn, even when its flame is no longer in sight? This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alan Sillitoe including rare images from the author''s estate.

A madcap, bawdy tale about an ordinary man who goes to work for a racketeer and has the adventure of a lifetime: the last novel by an iconic British writer.   Michael Cullen, from Nottingham, has a shady past, but nearing his forties, he’s settled down, married a doctor, and started working for an ad agency. That is, until the agency fires him. He’s not terribly upset though. Actually, he feels free—he hated that job. But he knows he’s disappointed his wife and isn’t sure what to do next, so he decides to hit the road for a few weeks.   Then, he’s contacted by his old boss, Claude Moggerhanger. A racketeer whom Cullen once tried—and failed—to put in jail, Moggerhanger seems to have forgiven him, and wants to hire him to do a little “job.” All he has to do is drive Moggerhanger’s Rolls Royce to Greece, get Greek food for Moggerhanger’s wife, collect a few packages, and deliver one in Belgrade. This sounds pretty suspect to Cullen, but he needs the money and has nothing else to do—plus, Moggerhanger can be very persuasive.   It’s only the beginning of a wild adventure with a cast of characters featuring Cullen’s father, who’s a famous writer, and his long-suffering girlfriend; crazed poets; endless women; rat catchers; Labrador retrievers; the highly menacing Green Toe Gang; and his old friend, Bill Straw, a former mercenary soldier. This novel will make you want to quit your job and go on the road, come what may.   Moggerhanger is the 3rd book in the Michael Cullen Novels, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.    

The second novel in award-winning, bestselling author Alan Sillitoe''s William Posters Trilogyis an existential investigation of protest and revolution in 1960s North Africa and EnglandJewish dilettante Myra Bassingfield returns to England from Gibraltar with her four-week-old son. Frank Dawley, the child''s father and the anarchist antihero of The Death of William Posters, has disappeared into the African desert, where he is fighting with the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale) for Algerian independence against French troops. Greeting Myra quayside as she disembarks from the ship is Frank''s friend, Albert Handley, an idealistic painter living in a chaotic house in Linconshire with seven kids, a bulldog, six cats, and two au pair girls. Albert''s brother, John, is determined to break from the family and he sets off for Algeria to track Frank down—but not before burning the Handley house to the ground. The Handley brood must then move in with Myra in Buckinghamshire, and by the time Frank finally shows up, they have formed a domestic cell of protest that may just plant the seeds of a new English revolution. From ramshackle life in a commune to undercover gunrunning, this is Alan Sillitoe, author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, at his humorous and literary best. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alan Sillitoe including rare images from the author''s estate.

A sociopolitical misadventure from the award-winning, bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner Frank Dawley is a working-class escapee. After twelve years of spiritual nullification at a factory in Nottingham, five years in an alienating marriage, and two burdensome kids, Frank is finally free. He has quit his job, burned his possessions, and sold his car, and is hitching a ride to wherever the road will take him. Haunting Frank’s physical and existential travels is a ubiquitous inscription painted on nearly every street corner in England: BILL POSTERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.   Who is this Bill Posters, who is so relentlessly hounded by the authorities? To Frank, Bill—or William—becomes a symbol of the servile proletariat, the “put-upon dreg” whose hollow ideologies have bombarded Frank throughout his entire life. As an act of resistance, Frank becomes determined to reject—even to kill—the William Posters that lives inside of him.   Ribald misadventures ensue as Frank finds his way from England to Spain to Morocco to Algeria—and into the beds of several married women. En route, he meets a revolutionary American who ends up engaging him in a high-stakes gunrunning mission. The first volume in an epic trilogy, The Death of William Posters sends Frank headfirst into the truth of what he’s been running away from all along.   This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alan Sillitoe including rare images from the author’s estate.    

An existential saga of working-class life in a British factory town and military service in the torrid jungles of the Far East from award-winning, bestselling author Alan SillitoeKey to the Door turns away from the boisterous pursuits of Arthur Seaton made infamous in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and focuses instead on the quieter rebellions of his older brother, Brian. Brian''s childhood and adolescence in the grimy streets of Nottingham are shaped by the Depression-era struggles of his family, the life and culture of the factory town, and the love and bullying of his iron-willed grandfather and erratic father. When Brian reaches adulthood, he frequents the local pubs, works hard at a cardboard factory, and runs into a sticky situation with a woman named Pauline that obliges him to marry her. Soon though, he is conscripted for the postwar occupation of Malaya, and his true colors begin to show. Brian declares that he only wears his uniform to collect his paycheck; he shows contempt for the soldiers who obey the rules; he pursues a relationship with an exotic Chinese dancer; and he sends poetry into the jungle in Morse code. At once a vivid family portrait and a study of "the desolate, companionless void of protest" prevalent in postwar England, Key to the Door establishes the Seaton Novels as a broad and sweeping saga of twentieth-century British life, set against the backdrop of Nottingham. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alan Sillitoe including rare images from the author''s estate.

From one of Britain''s leading writers comes a biting satire about a country founded on Nihilism and a government gone mad Nihilon is a country where honesty is outlawed, drunk driving is mandatory, and nihilism reigns supreme. Five researchers are sent into the midst of this chaos to compile a new guidebook about the peculiar, unexplored land and its all-powerful leader, President Nil. Adam, Benjamin, Jaquiline, Edgar, and Richard attempt to gather information—but find themselves swept up by a nation turned upside down. As they navigate their way to the capital through artificial mist created by President Nil to disorient his people, the writers are stopped by ordinary citizens whom they quickly discover cannot be trusted. Adam accidentally starts a ground war, Benjamin is forced to buy a car, and Jaquiline discovers that robbery is not only legal, but encouraged. The researchers, who arrived as tourists, will find that although it is easy to enter Nihilon, it is much, much harder to escape. Alan Sillitoe, the bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, crosses into uncharted territory in this comic dystopia that is as smart as it is engrossing.

Raised by a career soldier, a working class Englishman tries to find his place—both in and out of uniform—in this compelling novel of love and war   Charlie Scorton sees his best friend killed beside him in the mine, and resolves to join the army. His father throws him out for deserting the coal miner’s life, but Charlie never looks back. For twenty-four years, he roams the empire, a king’s soldier who is finally left with no choice but to come home. He has a child, his wife dies, and the old soldier dedicates himself to raising his boy.   Charlie trains his son, William, to be an artilleryman from birth. William finds a home in the army, the sort he has always longed for, and makes his mark during World War II, performing heroically during the retreat at Dunkirk, risking his life to save thousands. But soon, he will be forced to answer the question his father never could: What does a soldier do when war is over?   Alan Sillitoe, the bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, examines where the fight ends and life begins for a soldier in this story of love and war, and the blurred lines between them.  

A story of love and romance between two lost people in 1950s Britain, from the author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner   Every morning Pam decides to leave George. Somehow she never quite gets around to it. She’s flirted with suicide too, but she doesn’t see the point. A woman would have to be mad to kill herself for the sake of George. He’s a brute, vain and selfish, with a cruel sense of humor and absolutely no regard for his wife. Someday she will leave him: Why not today?   Pam flees to London, where she takes refuge in a lonely, sparsely furnished room. With a twist of her wrist, she turns on the gas and resigns herself to death, only to be rescued by a neighbor. Tom, a former sailor in the Merchant Navy who has just come into a surprise inheritance, is carrying scars of his own. Bound by despair, these two unlikely lovers begin a new life, and together they will find a reason to live   This lonely middle-aged couple finds victory in living, searching for love and happiness, and overcoming their pasts. In its portrayal of women, Her Victory has been compared to the novels of Doris Lessing and Margaret Drabble, and it is award-winning author Alan Sillitoe at his very best.  

A post-WWII adventure from the bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.   A top-secret mission sends a crew of Royal Air Force veterans from South Africa to the subarctic Kerguelen Islands in this suspense-packed tale of lawlessness, piracy, obsession, and greed. At the helm of the Aldebaran, a huge flying boat, sits the monomaniacal Captain Bennett, a man hell-bent on unearthing a treasure buried by the Germans in the final days of World War II. And on the seaplane’s radio is the young wireless operator Adcock, a man who listens to everything and tries to make sense of it all.   The rest of the ex-soldiers on board seek either riches or adventure—but all are fleeing the frustrations and disappointments of their postwar lives. As the voyage takes dangerous turns toward natural and manmade threats, it becomes clear that Captain Bennett is keeping secrets and the Aldebaran is not alone on her quest. Adcock’s morals are soon put to the test, machine guns are mounted on the flying boat’s turrets, and the thirst for gold may cost the crew their lives.   Classic kitchen sink realism meets high-flying adventure in this British thriller that goes beyond action and into the depths of human values and motivations in a war-damaged world. Drawing upon Alan Sillitoe’s own wartime experiences as a wireless operator, The Lost Flying Boat is full of aerial heroics, coded messages, shattered dreams, and the will to persevere.