Stan Barstow was one of a generation of Northern writers including John Braine, Alan Sillitoe, David Storey, and Keith Waterhouse who, fifty years ago, took the literary establishment by storm with their gritty accounts of working-class life. Their arrival marked a revolution in English literature the effects of which continue to this day. Barstow was born in Horbury in the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1928. He was the only son of a miner. He left school at sixteen to work as a draughtsman in a local engineering firm.