Festival Programme

Alan Sillitoe

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From his highly-acclaimed first books ¬ Saturday Night And Sunday Morning and The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner ¬ to his more recent A Man Of His Time, Alan Sillitoe has cut an uncompromisingly honest path through the jungle of literary fashion, and remains one of England’s greatest living authors.

A Start In Life, first published in 1970, is Sillitoe’s ninth novel, and follows the fortunes of Michael Cullen, who describes himself as ‘a bastard’ at the start of the novel and soon confirms another meaning of the description when he leaves Nottingham and his pregnant girlfriend behind to flee to London. Here he becomes involved in a smuggling ring, headed by the shady Claude Moggerhanger, and ends up smuggling gold bars for Jack Leningrad, who lives in an iron lung. Sillitoe has adopted the picaresque form for this novel, yet the book is full of his trademark humour, insight and social nous.

Concession price: £6.00