Author Alan Sillitoe died today at the age of 82. One of the 'Angry Young Men' of British fiction, he grew up in a poor household, 'whose four walls smelled of leaking gas, stale fat and layers of mouldering wallpaper'. Sillitoe worked for a short time as a RAF wireless operator in Malaya, yet after contracting tuberculosis, he began to write novels, publishing his first, 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning', in 1958. His most famous work, however is, perhaps ironically appropriate for the day of the London Marathon, 'The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner'. Praised by poet Ian McMillan to be 'a man who attempted to capture the majesty and drama of ordinary life', his son David said he hoped his father would be remembered for his contribution to literature.
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