New Release Books by David Storey

The third son of a coalminer, David Storey takes us from his tough upbringing in Wakefield, to being ''sold'' to Leeds Rugby League Club, to his escape to the Slade School of Art and his life in post-war London. He describes shocking scenes in the seventeen deprived East End schools in which he taught. He documents the childhood death of his eldest brother, addressing much of the memoir to him and exploring how this relates to his own sometimes paralysing depression, which haunted most of his life. And yet, a prolific and celebrated writer, he recalls heady spells in New York, close relationships in the theatre with Joycelyn Herbert, Ralph Richardson and Lindsay Anderson, early success with This Sporting Life, and winning the Booker Prize for his novel Saville.

Given its popularity, international football might be viewed as a prism through which the imagined community of the nation becomes closer to a manifest reality with matches providing examples of that community collectively rejoicing or crying. The sport potentially sheds insights on the complexities of ethnic and national identity, as it is a medium through which allegiances are (re)produced and expressed. Alongside the internationalisation of club teams, international representative teams also appear to be becoming more trans-national with players born outside that country, but with family connections to it, playing in the national colours. Increasing flexibility of regulations governing international representation means that countries can potentially select from a considerably broader pool of talent, drawing on players with ethnic or cultural connections to the country. For example, for a number of decades now, the Republic of Ireland team has included sizeable numbers of non-Irish born players, sons and grandsons of Irish emigrants. Similar tendencies are clear in the selection of English-born players of West Indian origin for football teams representing Caribbean countries. Colonial connections and related migration flows explain France’s selection of players born in places such as Algeria or Morocco but brought up in France. The successful French teams of the late 1990s and early 2000s drew heavily on players from a multiplicity of ethnic and geographic origins. Conversely, many African countries select French-born players of African origin thereby reclaiming some of the sons of their extensive diasporas and a sizeable number of players born in Europe have competed in the Africa Cup of Nations in recent years. In this way, historical colonial relationships and associated migration flows provide the backdrop to the more eclectic nature of national representative teams. Elsewhere this amalgamation of both civic and ethnic senses of national identity, has allowed teams like Turkey and Croatia to tap into their extensive emigrant pool. This book focuses on one dimension of the intricate connections between football, place and politics. It investigates the switching of national sporting allegiance by some footballers from their country of birth to country of residency or family origins, examines the reasons behind the recent growth of the phenomenon, and explores reactions to this.

Two award-winning novels—including This Sporting Life—from the Man Booker Prize–winning British novelist and “an absorbing writer” (The New Yorker). The son of a coal miner who went on to play professionally in the rugby league, British author David Storey drew heavily on his own background for his debut novel, This Sporting Life, which won the 1960 Macmillan Fiction Award. “The leading novelist of his generation,” Storey was also a playwright and screenwriter, going on to win the Man Booker Prize for his novel, Saville (The Daily Telegraph). The collected fiction gathered here includes This Sporting Life as well as his second novel, focusing on a female protagonist, also from a Yorkshire coal mining town. This Sporting Life: In a bleak Yorkshire mining town, an aggressive rugby league footballer finds fame, fortune, and countless women but cannot outrun the emptiness he feels inside. Storey also wrote the screenplay based on his “impressive first novel” for the award-winning film starring Richard Harris (The New York Times). “Classic . . . a revelation . . . Skeptical, belligerent, and acidly ironical.” —Edmund White, The Paris Review Flight Into Camden: Margaret, a miner’s daughter, leaves her oppressive family in Yorkshire, hoping to make a new life in London with a married teacher in this “love story written with seriousness and intensity” (The Observer). Storey’s second novel, told in Margaret’s voice, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award. “A tour de force of domestic oppression . . . Rises on occasions to a pitch of precise beauty which I can only . . . describe as poetry.” —The Guardian

"David Storey is a writer who genuinely extends the territory of drama" (Guardian) The Changing Room: "It''s about exactly what it is: Storey offers us, with an unforced tenderness, the shifting moods of everyday experience...the scene is busy, purposeful and exhilerating. You''d never imagine realism could be this theatrical...The Changing Room takes you into its world in a way few plays achieve." (Independent on Sunday)

"David Storey is a writer who genuinely extends the territory of drama" (Guardian) The Contractor: "A subtle and poetic parable about the nature and joy of skilled work, the meaning of community and the effect of its loss" (Observer); Home: "about the solitude and dislocation of madness and...the decline of Britain itself...part of the play''s appeal is that Storey leaves it to us to draw our own conclusions...a play that contains within itself the still, sad music of humanity." (Guardian); Stages: "...an elegy for lost times and places, an obituary that has been free-associated by the corpse-to-be...Storey once said that a play ''lives almost in the measure that it escapes and refuses definition''. He has always been a writer who hints rather than states, let alone hectors." (The Times); Caring, a companion piece to Stages, reflects a reassessment and renegotiation of the conflict between life and art.

The latest collection of David Storey''s plays; including the newly revised and revived The Changing Room. Introduced by the author This third volume of David Storey''s plays contains The Changing Room (Royal Court 1971): "If The Changing Room is Storey''s most powerful drama, it is because he has found in sport his purest metaphor for the war of existence" (Time Magazine); Cromwell (Royal Court 1973): "An exploration of the vices and virtues of the English Puritan instinct using the historical associations of the Cromwellian period. On top of that it is also an impressive piece of poetic drama employing a spare, flinty, concrete language that seems to be hewn out of rock...a rich and complex play" (Guardian); Life Class: "a portrait of a man, dangerous, controlled, and wounded, who brings down his whole career in one enormous gesture signifying that all we hold of good from the past is now incapable of renewal and irrelevant to our present needs...Life Class is not merely a very good play. It is a blazing masterpiece...It is a tremendous experience and its glare lights up the sky." (Sunday Times) "David Storey is a writer who genuinely extends the territory of drama" (Guardian)

"David Storey is a writer who genuinely extends the territory of drama" (Guardian)

WINNER OF THE 1976 BOOKER PRIZE ''If you are looking for an intellectual and artistic honesty, a patient thoughtfulness and detailed insight into other lives...this novel will delight and move you'' Guardian In spite of his brilliance, Colin Saville doesn''t fit in easily at the grammar school in town - 1940s middle-class society is so different from the mining village of his childhood. He makes tentative friendships and meets girls over long, empty summers but feels like an outsider with them and, increasingly, at home. Following the pattern of David Storey''s own early years, Saville is a remarkably honest portrait of the tensions between parents and children, the difficulties of making one''s own way in life, and the social divisions that persist still.

An illustrated classic from the author of Saville and Flight into Camden Written before David Storey’s 1976 Man Booker Prize–winning novel Saville, Edward tells the tale of a kindly and aging bishop who lives his life by just and holy standards—until one day he is surprised by the appearance of an old key, sitting in a curious box atop his study desk. Illustrated by the fine hand of Donald Parker, Edward follows the bishop as he works to ascertain the true nature of the key—and the lock which it opens. In stunning, gripping prose the story unfolds as a mechanic comes to settle the matter once and for all. Part childlike, humorous frolic, part overarching metaphor for the challenges each of us face, Edward is a satirical classic.

A miner’s daughter leaves home to make a new life in London with a married teacher in this beautiful love story that won the 1961 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize Most of Margaret’s family is graveside when they lay her grandfather to rest. Although everyone is in the same place, they are not really together. Margaret descends from Yorkshire coal miners, stoic people who have mastered the art of burying their feelings deep underground. Her relatives may be content to live this way, but Margaret yearns for something more. A secretary at the Coal Board, she gets a glimpse of another life when she visits her brother at his university and a fair-haired art teacher catches her eye. The teacher’s name is Howarth; he is married, but that does not stop Margaret from risking everything she has in order to be with him. To escape the oppressive presence of her family, Margaret and Howarth flee to London. At first intoxicated by love, Margaret is soon shocked by what she finds in the city, and by how impossible it is to truly leave home.

A wry and deeply affecting novel about a man’s ruminations on art and death by the Man Booker Prize–winning author of This Sporting Life Matthew Maddox is an art historian and professor emeritus at the Drayburgh School of Fine Art. Nearing 70, his 3 sons are grown and his ex-wife, Charlotte, has remarried. After a failed suicide attempt in front of a moving train, Maddox attends art therapy classes in order to find new meaning in his life. Although he is isolated, Maddox does have his champions. Simone, his lover and partner, is returning shortly from an analysts’ conference in Vienna. She has her own baggage, but Simone feels responsible for Maddox. Others who genuinely care about Maddox include his former mentor Daniel Viklund, whose wartime past fascinates Maddox; his older sister, Sarah; and his younger brother, Paul. There is also Eric Taylor, once his most promising student, now a convicted murderer, in whom Maddox sees echoes of his own life. An unabashed novel of mental illness, As It Happened tells of the prisons in which we find ourselves, the anxieties that exert their hold, and the desperate search for purpose in how we live and how we die.

A rugby player finds fame and fortune in a bleak mining town, but he cannot outrun the emptiness he feels inside in Man Booker Prize–winning author David Storey’s seminal first novel On Christmas Eve, Arthur breaks his two front teeth. A teammate on the rugby pitch is too slow with a handoff, and instead of catching the ball, Art catches an opponent’s foot right in the mouth. When he regains consciousness, the match is almost over, but he keeps playing regardless. Where else would he go? His entire life, Art has only cared about sports and nothing grabs his attention quite like the lightning-fast violence of Rugby League. He knows it could kill him, but it also makes him feel alive. In this hard-bitten Yorkshire mining town, the warriors of the rugby pitch are treated like gods. Through the aggressive sport, Art finds money, friends, and countless women. But when his lust for violence begins to fade, will he have the courage to leave the game behind?

A seventeen-year-old is sent to the country to live with his much-older half-brother and falls into an unexpected affair in this novel by Man Booker Prize–winning author David Storey The narrator of Storey’s eleventh novel is an angst-ridden seventeen-year-old who shares intimate details of his life in the form of memos written to himself. Born in Beverly Hills, California, Richard “Rick” Audlin now lives with his film producer half-brother, Gerry—who is thirty-five years his senior—in a rambling old Victorian house in Hampstead. Gerry’s second wife, Martha, is a former film star who has been committed to a mental institution. When Gerry has to go abroad on business, he trundles Rick off to the home of his long-estranged sibling, James (Rick’s other half-brother), who lives on the outskirts of a remote village and is the author of seven unpublished crime novels. It is James’s wife, Clare, who meets Rick at the station. Flirty and attractive, she soon draws Rick into an illicit liaison. But Rick senses that something else is going on—something that will eventually lead him to a shattering secret in his family . . . and the thin ice they’re all skating on.

An art teacher searches for meaning in a strange town as his wife spirals into madness in this stunning novel from Man Booker Prize–winning author David Storey Colin Freestone had not planned to live in northern England. The people here are so passionate and raw that he does not expect to ever understand them or feel at ease. But when his wife, Yvonne, fell sick, she would only accept psychiatric care if she could be near her mother, so Colin had no choice but to move north. As Yvonne wastes away in the hospital, sinking deeper and deeper into a terrifying and incomprehensible madness, Colin tries to make sense of his strange surroundings. He may live here now, but he will never call it home. To pass the time, he takes a job teaching art at a second-rate college that is headed by a nutrition-crazed dean. Colin makes friends, meets women, and plays tennis, but nothing can distract him from the fact that his wife is slowly dying and he is helpless to stop it.

From “the leading novelist of his generation” (the Daily Telegraph)—a story about marriage, family, and 1 man’s 2nd chance At age 47, former playwright Frank Attercliffe lives with 2 of his 5 children in a 4-bedroom apartment on Walton Lane on the outskirts of an English suburb. For the past 3 years, his wife, Sheila, has been living with Maurice, a car dealer who owns a Rolls-Royce, a Bentley, and a Jaguar—a man rumored to have killed 3 people in car accidents. Attercliffe cowrites a weekend football roundup for the local sports column, and after a match, he is introduced to the beautiful actress Phyllis Gardner at his favorite watering hole. That night, however, Sheila comes home, having left Maurice and given up her current lover, Gavin. She wants to move back to Walton Lane with the entire family—but she wants Attercliffe to move out. With its cast of eccentric and endearing characters, including Attercliffe’s loquacious fellow journalists, his alcoholic mentor, and the daughters who force him to live in the moment, Present Times is a novel about marriage, changing family values, and 2nd acts.

Mr Ewbank is organising the marquee for his daughter''s wedding. Erecting a huge muslin tent his team of labourers banter and backbite. The audience watch as these skilled men come together to facilitate an event they won''t be attending, and come back the following day, after the fun has been had, to remove the construction again. Meanwhile, Ewbank watches as his labour and business are reined to deliver a send-off that will mark a fundamental shift in his working and family life. ''The Contractor'' premiered at the Royal Court in October 1969.

One works. One looks around. One meets people. But very little communication takes place . . . That is the nature of this little island. As five apparently unrelated characters meet in a seemingly insignificant garden, the autumnal sun shines overhead and everybody waits for rain. What they discuss is superficially anything that can pass the time. What is portrayed is the very essence of England, Englishness, class, unfulfilled ambition, loves lost and homes that no longer exist. Storey''s timeless play is a beautiful, compassionate, tragic and darkly funny study of the human mind and a once-great nation coming to terms with its new place in the world.

Politics and political relationships underpin the world we live in. From the division of the earth’s surface into separate states to the placement of ‘keep out’ signs, territorial strategies to control geographic space can be used to assert, maintain or resist power and as a force for oppression or liberation. Forms of exclusion can be consolidated and reinforced through territorial practices, yet they can also be resisted through similar means. Territoriality can be seen as the spatial expression of power, with borders dividing those inside from those outside. The extensively revised and updated second edition continues to provide an introduction to theories of territoriality and the outcomes of territorial control and resistance. It explores the construction of territories and the conflicts which often result using a range of examples drawn from various spatial scales and from many different countries. It ranges in coverage from conflicts over national territory (such as Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, South Ossetia) to divisions of space based around class, gender and race. While retaining the key elements of the first edition, this new edition covers contemporary debates on nationalism, territorialization, globalization and borders. It updates the factual content to explore the territorial consequences of ‘9/11’, the ‘war on terror’ and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also examines migration, refugees, the territorial expansion of the European Union, and territorial divisions in the home and workplace. The book emphasizes the underlying processes associated with territorial strategies and raises important questions relating to place, culture and identity. Key questions emerge concerning geographic space, who is ‘allowed’ to be in particular spaces and who is barred, discouraged or excluded. Written from a geographical perspective, the book is inter-disciplinary, drawing on ideas and material from a range of academic disciplines including, history, political science, sociology, international relations, cultural studies. Each chapter contains boxed case studies, illustrations and guides to further reading.

Additional edition statement from cover.

A teacher oppressed by the futility of everyday life embarks on a dark affair in this extraordinary novel that won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize In his dreams, Colin Pasmore runs an endless race. No matter how hard he pumps his legs, he loses—and not just to other runners, but to every “dullard and idler” in England. Every morning, he wakes up screaming in terror. His life should be joyful; he has a lovely wife, healthy children, and a comfortable job. But as he approaches thirty, Pasmore feels the walls closing in. He must find a way out before ordinary existence suffocates him. In a desperate attempt to escape his routine, Pasmore rents a small room in London, intending to use it for an affair. But adultery does nothing to lessen his burden. As misery threatens to consume his soul, Pasmore will ask himself if any life—even a happy one—is worth living.

First performed at the Royal Court in April 1974, ''Life Class'' depicts a crucial day in the life of an art school teacher named Allott, as he aims to lead his class through the processes of discovery that will turn their sketches into artworks, but which instead lead only to troubling scenes and crossed boundaries.