Alan Silitoe was a wonderful writer from Nottingham, England, home of the Raleigh bicycle company, another chronicler of working-class life like D.H. Lawrence. I read a lot of Silitoe in my twenties. I was impressed by his knowledge of maps, Ordnance Survey and all that. The Loneliness of the Long-distance runner is a classic.

Great video, & great to hear David speak.....Hope you're keeping well brother ?

David Sillitoe's words on his father are greatly appreciated. Alan Sillitoe's work was a journey on green roads for his readers, no wonder he was so accomplished at reading maps. The journey took us through books such as The Death of William Posters, Raw Material, The Storyteller, Men Women and Children, The Ragman's Daughter, Snow on the North Face of Lucifer (his other work as a poet), The Lost Flying Boat, Her Victory, The Open Door, Life Without Armour, The German Numbers Women. I remember reading his picaresque novel A Start in Life in the canteen of a bus garage in 1972, astonished and delighted at the way this writer could surprise me with epiphanies in unexpected places. Sillitoe's England is evergreen.

Thank you for this. Alan Sillitoe was one of the first writers of adult books that I read in my teens. Once I'd read his back catalogue, I would wait for each new book to come out. I regret not having written to him and telling him how much I admired and enjoyed his writing. I think of Alan today as not just a great writer but also a craftsman. My favourites are the William Posters Trilogy which I first read in the 1970s.

For me The Ragman's Daughter counts among the best short stories I've ever read. Found a rare poetry and the love story of that couple of young thieves was so touchingly written that could share their dreams and not so wild expectations. Once finished you couldn't avoid wishing them the better. Loved the whole volume, as happened to me with the famous one of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, whose Tony Richardson movie I went to watch, after. Honestly, think there's beauty and a deep understanding of the human being in this Short (or not so short) Story. Then I went on with Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, the lifes of those common workers, and liked it too. Find Sillitoe a very good story teller, maybe underrated. His Start in Life and The General's Daughter are quite good books too. And he had a remarkable good knowledge of cockney, something that can be easily seen in some or many of his books. A very good and realistic author with a good ear for English language. I warmly recommend Sillitoe to every reader searching for quality in Literature. 🤗🆗❤️👍💎🙏

Absolutely brilliant 💔

My great-grandfather was The Ragman [Walter Pleasance] of 103 Salisbury Street & my great-aunt Flo was his daughter - hence, Alan's short-story. He wasn't the only writer from Salisbury Street, as I studied maths there & wrote The Theory of Intermediate Cardinal Numbers, Cogitatio and The Autobiography of God Almighty. I attended 3 top universities & a BBC editor-director Angelica Landry made a film of my life called The Lost Genius [it's on KZread]. I have a letter somewhere in my archives that Alan wrote to me years ago & I knew his ma to nod to and a nephew I met in the M. of L., who urged me to visit him [5 Lancaster Gate? if my memory serves me well]. I knew Frankie Buller et al. I now write & paint in my art-gallery Arte del Fulmine [= Art of the Thunderbolt] in Dolcedo, Italy & I've probably written the largest illustrated book since Leonardo da Vinci - 1000s of pages over 50 years on maths, logic, philosophy, literature, art [history], adventures in out of the way places [Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, Egypt ETC] + I deconstruct literature in Greek, Latin, German and Arabic. I attended Forster St school & Radford Boulevard also, but age 16 I was outed by Mil Intel in HM Armed Forces as a sort of super-genius & equated with WJ Sidis IQ 250-300, so my life changed radically as I lived as a hobo before getting 10 testimonials from Oxbridge etc mathematicians & philosophers. In the SN & SM film right at the beginning my mother's arm can be seen pulling back a kid to stop him spoiling a camera-shot. It's a strange world is it not? Radford was terribly violent when I was there circa 1958 and, like my great-grandfather, who was a gunman & probably linked to the Old Sodom razor-gang, I also went on the run. There was a vice-ring in Beeston Notts & my grandfather - who also lived in Salisbury St circa 1919 - supplied [quote] ladies of the night to King George V & VI & their friends and placed their unwanted offspring with Nottinghamshire families - including me probably. My paternal DNA is completely without European antecedents & the Pleasance family were almost certainly from Italy. To control rag & paper in Nottingham etc probably took heavy muscle.

My name is Allie Sillitoe. Whenever I google my last name his always pops up! I’m from the US and I’ve only found a handful of others that live in the states with the same last name. maybe we’re related!

@millieashford7122

Күн бұрын

Hey, i’m Alans great niece. We have a family tree with all ancestors on and if you could give names of your ancestors with the last name sillitoe i could help you. The last name was originally spelt “Sillito”.

Didn't Alan meet Robert Graves in Deià? I think he told him "Get it down, Alan" meaning his Nottingham stories. And if SNSM is ever remade please have real Nottingham accents, the old film is just generic Northern.