Storey, David (Malcolm)

(British, 1933– )

The son of a miner, David Storey was born in Yorkshire. He worked as a professional footballer and teacher before beginning his career as a writer. His first novel, This Sporting Life (1960), drew on his experience of professional sport to portray the difficulties faced by a young rugby league player embroiled in a relationship with his landlady. The book established Storey as one of his generation's foremost chroniclers of northern working-class life. Later novels include Radcliffe (1963), an ambitious study of class, sexuality, and violence in the vein of D. H. Lawrence, Pasmore (1972), an account of a college lecturer experiencing a nervous breakdown, and Saville (1976), a portrait of a Yorkshire mining village that won the Booker Prize in 1976. He is also known as a laywright and has published a retrospective selection of poems.

Alan Sillitoe, D. H. Lawrence, Barry Hines  WB