David Storey

David Storey – Life, Career & Notable Works

Explore the life, novels, plays, and legacy of David Storey (1933–2017), the English novelist and playwright. Discover his biography, major works like This Sporting Life and Saville, themes, and impact on British literature.

Introduction

David Malcolm Storey (13 July 1933 – 27 March 2017) was an English novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and former professional rugby league player.

He is best known for his raw, socially grounded narratives that often explore class, identity, dislocation, and the tensions inherent in striving for personal transformation. His works include the award-winning novel Saville (1976), and the seminal novel This Sporting Life (1960), which was adapted to film.

Though he is often labeled a novelist, his legacy is equally strong in theatre: his plays such as In Celebration, The Changing Room, and Home remain landmarks of postwar British drama.

Early Life & Background

• David Storey was born in Wakefield, West Riding of Yorkshire, England, on 13 July 1933.

• His father, Frank Richmond Storey, worked as a coal miner, and the family’s working-class background would profoundly influence Storey’s literary sensibility.

• He attended Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield.

• Later, he trained at the Slade School of Fine Art in London.

• To support himself during art school, he played rugby league (for Leeds) — often in the “A” team, sometimes in the first team — balancing athletic and academic ambitions.

• At one point, the demands of art study and rugby conflicted; he ultimately relinquished the rugby contract and focused on writing and the arts.

Literary Career & Major Works

Novels

Storey began publishing novels in 1960.

Some of his important novels:

• This Sporting Life (1960) — his debut. It won the Macmillan Fiction Award and was adapted into a film in 1963 (for which Storey wrote the screenplay).

• Flight into Camden (1961) — won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award.

• Radcliffe (1963)

• Pasmore (1972) — explores social mobility, mental strain, and class conflict. It won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1973 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

• Saville (1976) — perhaps his most celebrated work, winning the Booker Prize.

• Later novels include A Prodigal Child, Present Times, A Serious Man, As It Happened, Thin-Ice Skater, among others.

Plays & Theatre

Storey was equally active in drama and is widely respected for his plays:

• The Restoration of Arnold Middleton (1967)

• In Celebration (1969) — one of his most performed works

• Home (1970)

• The Changing Room (1973) — set during a rugby match, exploring identity, masculinity, and camaraderie.

• The Contractor, Early Days, Sisters, Stages, Mother’s Day, Life Class, Cromwell, and more.

Many of his plays were adapted into television or film versions, extending their reach.

Screenwriting & Adaptations

• Storey adapted This Sporting Life (1960 novel) into the screenplay for the 1963 film directed by Lindsay Anderson.

• He collaborated multiple times with director Lindsay Anderson on stage and screen adaptations.

• Plays like Home and Early Days were filmed or broadcast on television.

Themes, Style & Significance

Class & Mobility

One major thread in Storey’s work is his critique and exploration of social mobility. Coming from a mining background, he often dramatized the tension, guilt, and alienation that accompany escape from one’s origins.

This is vivid in Saville, which follows a boy breaking from his Yorkshire mining roots.

Identity, Alienation & Conflict

Storey’s characters often navigate psychological strain: relationships under pressure, a sense of dislocation, self-doubt, and internal conflict.

He often uses realism with spaces for silence and implication—what is not said can carry weight.

Sporting & Physical Metaphor

His early life as a rugby player surfaces in his writing, especially in This Sporting Life and The Changing Room, where sports acts as metaphor for struggle, competition, camaraderie, masculinity, and bodily limits.

Psychological Realism

Though rooted in social realism, Storey’s writing has psychological subtlety. He probes inner lives, vulnerabilities, fragility, and the invisible costs of striving.

Stylistic Qualities

• Direct, unadorned prose.

• Inclusion of abrupt shifts, ellipses, and moments of abrupt interiority.

• Brevity with emotional density.

• Use of vernacular and regional voices to ground his characters.

Personal Life & Later Years

• In 1956, Storey married Barbara Rudd Hamilton; they had four children (two sons, Jake and Sean; two daughters, Helen and Kate).

• Barbara Storey died in 2015.

• David Storey died on 27 March 2017 in London, aged 83, after battles with Parkinson’s disease and dementia.

• He is buried in Highgate Cemetery (eastern side).

Selected Quotes

David Storey is not widely known for pithy quotable lines (compared to philosophers or essayists), but a few remarks and observations stand out in reviews, interviews, and memoirs. While unattributed or fragmentary, some reflect his sensibility:

• On roots and departure: “You can’t abandon your past entirely, because it’s where you began.” (paraphrase of his recurring idea in Saville)

• On class: “To escape one’s social class is not to forget it—its weight remains.” (interpretive distillation of frequent theme)

• On silence in relationships: “Much of what is unsaid lies like sediment between people.” (reflecting his dramatic mode)

• On striving: “We push forward, but in doing so we risk the loss of what was behind.” (a recurring motif in his later novels)

Because direct quotes are harder to source, if you like, I can look up verified passages from his interviews or memoirs and share them.

Lessons & Takeaways

1. The past shapes you, even when you try to outrun it
   Storey’s work suggests that leaving one’s roots often carries psychological cost and tension.

2. Social mobility is not purely liberating
   Elevation may bring alienation—Storey shows the emotional rupture that can follow.

3. Physical life and metaphor enrich storytelling
   His use of sport, the body, and physical struggle gives texture and metaphorical depth.

4. Emotion often dwells in silence
   His narratives pay attention to unsaid thoughts, hesitation, failures of communication.

5. Crossing genres strengthens voice
   Storey’s fluency across novel, play, screenplay enriched both sides of his output.

Conclusion

David Storey remains an essential figure in postwar British literature and theatre. His unflinching portrayals of class, identity, ambition, and alienation, grounded in both the physical world and the inner self, offer work that is emotionally precise, socially acute, and enduringly resonant.

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