Stan Barstow – författare

Luther Stringer is the titular head of a Yorkshire working-class family of wife and three daughters – one married, one engaged, one a student.His middle daughter’s “fiancy” is in bad odour with him for refusing to participate in a strike and being sent to Coventry. This dissension, however, pales into insignificance before the hornet’s nest that is stirred up when Luther’s eldest daughter discovers in her father’s pocket a packet of “electronically tested” contraceptives. The women’s reaction is instant and their vengeance terrible, but the result is unexpected and perhaps unwelcome. Stringer’s Last Stand, however interpreted, may not be as cataclysmic as Custer’s, but – it certainly shakes up a Yorkshire household.

The story of Wilf Cotton, a young writer; he gets a short story broadcast on the radio, and so decides to leave his home in a mining village to work in a city, and to try to write a novel. It is also the story of a young woman who moves back to the city she left a few years earlier, and their relationship. Ask Me Tomorrow was produced at the Sheffield Playhouse in 1965, and as a radio play in 1966. The playscript was published by Samuel French in 1966.

- 3 women, 4 men