ALAN SILLITOE was born in Nottingham, England on March 4th 1928. At fourteen he began work in various factories, until at seventeen becoming an air traffic control assistant. After four years in the Royal Air Force as a wireless operator he returned from Malaya for demobilization but was found to have contracted tuberculosis. During his recovery he decided to become a writer. Much of the 1950s he lived in France and Spain, where he wrote many poems, and his first novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, published in 1958. The following year came his second book, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Both novels were made into films. Since then he has written novels, stories, poems, plays, travel books, and stories for children. His Collected Poems was published in 1993, and his Collected Stories and autobiography, Life Without Armour, in 1995.
