Alan Sillitoe dies aged 82

Alan Sillitoe (1928-2010), iconic author of kitchen-sink dramas such as The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner and Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, has died in hospital aged 82. Sillitoe, a prototypical Angry Young Man (although averse to the label), left his mark in British culture with his take on everyday dramas, concerning everyday, unglamorous people - hence the 'kitchen sink' label.

Born to a Nottingham working-class family himself, he began writing around 20, while convalescing from tuberculosis. He has published novels, short stories, plays, poetry, and essays, as well as an autobiography (Life without Armour, 1995).

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Tony Richardson's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) was based on a short story by Sillitoe, which bears all the marks of the kitchen-sink drama: class consciousness, class identity, class conflict, all embodied in the figure of an Angry Young Man.

Although the film's handling of class conflict lacks the subtlety of more nuanced examples of the genre, Tom Courtenay is absolutely superb as Colin Smith, the young, working-class Nottingham delinquent, pitted by circumstance and choice against the marginalising system. And Colin Smith's choice, to let deliberately someone else win the race, remains a bold rejection of an entire package of principles that, in promoting all-or-nothing antagonism, have proved antagonistic to social cohesion. Effectively, in that story, Alan Sillitoe argues that, in fact, it is the establishment that is guilty of 'anti-social behaviour'.

Excerpt from The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962)

For more biographical details and a list of publications see the British Council's entry; obituary in the Guardian.