Alan Sillitoe
Personal Information
Description
Alan Sillitoe was born in Nottingham, England, to working-class parents. His father worked in the Raleigh factory. In World War II he served with the Royal Air Force as a wireless operator in Malaysia from 1946-1949. Upon returning to England, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent sixteen months in an RAF hospital. After he was discharged, he lived in France and Spain on his veteran's pension and attempted to recover from the disease. In 1955, while living in Mallorca with his lover, American poet Ruth Fainlight, he began to write his first novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, which was published in 1958. He has written many novels and several volumes of poetry. In 1995 he wrote an autobiography, Life Without Armour. He married Ruth Fainlight, and lives in London.
Books
Collected Poems
A man of his time
In 1887, 21-year-old Ernest Burton leaves his parents' home in a village near Nottingham for the first time, to take up work as a journeyman blacksmith in the coalfields of South Wales. Ernest takes to the role with ease -- boldly, recklessly, fearlessly standing up to his superiors and seducing young girls. In a bid to settle down, Ernest returns home to marry his childhood sweetheart and become a master smith. A tyrannical father, he rules over his young family with an iron fist, instilling a mixture of fear and hatred in is sons and daughters. A bully, who shows no mercy, he also has effortless charm and magnetic attraction.