"Stan Barstow’s stories... have what is so rare in a successful writer — a kind of primary vision, a feeling for characters, the mileux he originally knew and might have grown away from. He speaks for urban provincial life with piercing vividness; for a particular outlook and mortality that few other writers touch..." Financial Times
A classic selection of the best of Stan Barstow’s stories covering the last five decades of British life. A group of young tearaways on a night out that begins with horse-play and ends in tragedy; the loneliness of a drunken miner’s wife; a war-shocked ex-sailor forced beyond endurance, a widower is brought to grief by a woman outside his real understanding, a factory worker finding his way through the physical world of his marriage — real and involving, Barstow’s stories are urgent slices of life, men and women struggling and succeeding to come to terms with The Likes of Us.
Along with Alan Sillitoe and John Braine, Stan Barstow is considered one of the pioneers of the 1960s school of northern literary realism. A Kind of Loving became a film directed by John Schlesinger and starring Alan Bates. He has produced eleven novels and three books of short stories, as well as TV scripts. Other novels include Ask Me Tomorrow (1962), The Watchers on the Shore (1966) and The Right True End (1976). He lived in Pontardawe, South Wales until his death in 2011.
“Extraordinarily good” The Daily Telegraph
“A master storyteller” The Times
“Right up in the same class as D.H.Lawrence…” The Guardian
“A major writer.” Punch