Colin Saville grows up in a mining village in South Yorkshire, against the background of war, of an industrialised countryside, of town and coalmine and village.

Three powerful novels from the Man Booker Prize–winning British novelist of This Sporting Life and "an absorbing writer" ( The New Yorker).The son of a coal miner who went on to play professionally in the rugby league, British author David Storey drew heavily on his own background for his debut novel, This Sporting Life, which won the 1960 Macmillan Fiction Award and was made into a film with Richard Harris. "The leading novelist of his g...

The third son of a coalminer, David Storey takes us from his tough upbringing in Wakefield, to being 'sold' to Leeds Rugby League Club, to his escape to the Slade School of Art and his life in post-war London. He describes shocking scenes in the seventeen deprived East End schools in which he taught. He documents the childhood death of his eldest brother, addressing much of the memoir to him and exploring how this relates to his own sometimes paralysing depression, which haunted most of hi...

Rugby League football in an industrial northern city circa 1960 is a life of grime, mud, sweat, intrigue and naked ambition. In This Sporting Life, David Storey recounts the fortunes of gladiator hero Arthur Machin from the day of his inclusion in the local team to the match when he begins to feel age creeping up on him. Through Arthur we are taken into his raw, often brutal world of players, backers, Saturday crowds bloody noses and broken teeth, landladies and communal ...

A novel about family and class restrictions by the Man Booker Prize–winning author of This Sporting Life and SavilleWith 2 rooms downstairs and 3 upstairs, the house at Spinney Moor Road is a real step-up for the Morley family. Arthur Morley is a farmer who frequently comes home drunk, and who often competes with his prudish, penny-pinching wife, Sarah, for the love of their boys, Alan and Bryan. It is Bryan, the younger son, who begins to want mo...

An art teacher searches for meaning in a strange town as his wife spirals into madness in this stunning novel from Man Booker Prize–winning author David StoreyColin Freestone had not planned to live in northern England. The people here are so passionate and raw that he does not expect to ever understand them or feel at ease. But when his wife, Yvonne, fell sick, she would only accept psychiatric care if she could be near her mother, so Colin had no choice but to mov...

An illustrated classic from the author of Saville and Flight into CamdenWritten before David Storey's 1976 Man Booker Prize–winning novel Saville, Edward tells the tale of a kindly and aging bishop who lives his life by just and holy standards—until one day he is surprised by the appearance of an old key, sitting in a curious box atop his study desk. Illustrated by the fine hand of Donald Parker, Edward follows the bisho...

Three thought-provoking novels from the Man Booker Prize–winning British novelist of This Sporting Life and "an absorbing writer" ( The New Yorker).The son of a coal miner who went on to play professionally in the rugby league, British author David Storey drew heavily on his own background for his debut novel, This Sporting Life, which won the 1960 Macmillan Fiction Award and was made into a film with Richard Harris. "The leading novelist...

From "the leading novelist of his generation" (the Daily Telegraph)—a story about marriage, family, and 1 man's 2nd chanceAt age 47, former playwright Frank Attercliffe lives with 2 of his 5 children in a 4-bedroom apartment on Walton Lane on the outskirts of an English suburb. For the past 3 years, his wife, Sheila, has been living with Maurice, a car dealer who owns a Rolls-Royce, a Bentley, and a Jaguar—a man rumored to have killed 3 people in car accid...

A seventeen-year-old is sent to the country to live with his much-older half-brother and falls into an unexpected affair in this novel by Man Booker Prize–winning author David StoreyThe narrator of Storey's eleventh novel is an angst-ridden seventeen-year-old who shares intimate details of his life in the form of memos written to himself. Born in Beverly Hills, California, Richard "Rick" Audlin now lives with his film producer half-brother, Gerry—who is thirty-five...

A wry and deeply affecting novel about a man's ruminations on art and death by the Man Booker Prize–winning author of This Sporting LifeMatthew Maddox is an art historian and professor emeritus at the Drayburgh School of Fine Art. Nearing 70, his 3 sons are grown and his ex-wife, Charlotte, has remarried. After a failed suicide attempt in front of a moving train, Maddox attends art therapy classes in order to find new meaning in his life.Although he...

In post war Britiain a new writing style emerged from the bleak times. It was commonly known as "kitchen sink drama". That sounds a little disrespectful now, perhaps, but these stories brought realism and raw emotion to their readers. David Storey's This Sporting Life, set in the industrial north, brilliantly conveys 21-year-old steelworker Arthur Machin's love of his rugby league, his success on the field, and his feelings towards his widowed landlady, as well as his bouts of doubt and an...