Alan Sillitoe was born in 1928, the son of a tannery worker. He left school at age fourteen to work in a factory. He was one of the working-class novelists who revitalized British fiction in the 1950s. His first novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was followed with the bestselling collection The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. He adapted both works for the screen in the early 1960s. He is the author of more than 40 works of prose, poetry, and drama.