Featured on The Book Show on Sky Arts on 26 February 2009.

A classic of the “angry young man” era, this is a great commentary on the social history of 1950’s Britain. This is a new edition to mark the 50th anniversary of publication.

Synopsis

With a new introduction by Richard Bradford. Alan Sillitoe's classic novel of the 1950s, reissued to coincide with the 50th anniversary of its original publication.

Working all day at a lathe leaves Arthur Seaton with energy to spare in the evenings. A hard-drinking, hard-fighting young rebel, he knows what he wants, and he's sharp enough to get it. Before long, his carryings-on with a couple of married women is local gossip. But then one evening he meets a young girl in a pub, and Arthur's 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.

Reviews

‘That rarest of all finds: a genuine no-punches-pulled, unromanticised working class novel. Mr Sillitoe is a born writer, who knows his milieu and describes it with vivid, loving precision.’ Daily Telegraph

‘His writing has real experience in it and an instinctive accuracy that never loses its touch. His book has a glow about it as though he had plugged it into some basic source of the working-class spirit.’ Guardian

‘Miles nearer the real thing than D.H.Lawrence's mystic, brooding working-men ever came.’ Sunday Express

‘Outspoken and vivid.’ Sunday Times

About the Author

Alan Sillitoe was born in 1928, and left school at fourteen to work in various factories until becoming an air traffic control assistant with the Ministry of Aircraft Production in 1945. He enlisted in May 1946 into the RAFVR, and spent two years on active service in Malaya as a wireless operator. At the end of 1949, he was invalided out of the service with a hundred percent disability pension.   His first stories were printed in the ‘Nottingham Weekly Guardian’. In 1958 ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’ was published and ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner’, which won the Hawthornden prize for Literature, came out the following year. Both these books were made into films.   Further works include ‘Key to the Door', The Ragman’s Daughter’ and ‘The General’ (both also filmed), ‘The William Posters Trilogy, A Start in Life, Raw Material, The Widower’s Son ‘- as well as eight volumes of poetry and ‘Nottinghamshire’, for which David Sillitoe took the photographs. His latest novels are ‘Her Victory, The Lost Flying Boat, Down From the Hill, Life Goes On, The Open Door, Last Loves, Leonard’s War,’ and ‘Snowstop’. He has also published his ‘Collected Stories’ and his autobiography, ‘Life Without Armour’.   Alan Sillitoe died in April 2010. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation