A portrait of individual and communal struggles to maintain authenticity and revolutionary fervor in 1960s England from award-winning, bestselling author Alan Sillitoe The 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. ...

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 wonderful historical novel from one of our best loved and most prolific writers As 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...

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...