David Storey, 1933 – 2017: Britain’s great post-war novelist
Britain’s greatest post-war novelist is reported as having died today, at the age of 83. It seems a rather extravagant claim for David Storey, who, lumped together with other writers who had the great advantage of not coming from London or the Home Counties, as ‘kitchen-sink’ and ‘angry young man’, drifted out of fashion just as he was producing some of his greatest work. But I can’t think of many who come close to the Yorkshireman. Doris Lessing maybe, possibly Ballard and Burgess, certainly Graham Greene if you count him as post-war. But Storey deserves to be remembered in that pantheon, that Champions League elite. For most people, though, he