Alan Sillitoe was born in Nottingham 1928, where his father was working as a tanner, making them working-class people. This affected Alan Sillitoe highly in his work as a writer. He had no notions as a young child to become a writer, and started his working career in the same bicycle-factory as his father then worked in, spending his leisure time drinking and having fun with girls.
In 1947 he went to Malaya, where he caught tuberculosis and had to spend about 18 months in bed, using the time to catch up with the school-work he had missed out on earlier. At the age of 30, he had caught up with and even surpassed some of the people at the same age.
He received a little pension after leaving the airforce, making able to go to France and live there for a while. Then he lived in Majorca and met Robert Graves (1895-1985) who encouraged him to write about something he knew well. Taking the advice, he wrote about a young Nottingham worker in "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", which became a success and made him financially secure.
Although taking his heroes from the working-class, Alan Sillitoe wants to be more than a rebel. He wants to be a visionary, a prophet giving insight to mankind.