Stan Barstow

Stanley Barstow FRSL (28 June 1928 – 1 August 2011)^[1] was an English novelist.^[2]

Biography[]

Barstow was born in Horbury, near Wakefield in the West Riding of Yorkshire. His father was a coal miner and he attended Ossett Grammar School. He worked as a draughtsman and salesman for an engineering company.^[3] He was best known for his 1960 novel A Kind of Loving, which has been turned into a film, a television series, a radio play and a stage play. The author's other novels included Ask Me Tomorrow (1962), The Watchers on the Shore (1966) and The Right True End (1976). He frequently attended public events in Ossett, where he grew up, and Horbury, his birthplace.

Barstow's other works included Joby, which was turned into a television play starring Patrick Stewart, A Raging Calm, A Season with Eros, A Brother’s Tale, Just You Wait and See, Modern Delights and an autobiography, In My Own Good Time (2001). He also wrote plays and short stories.

Barstow married Connie Kershaw in 1951 with whom he had two children Neil and Gillian. In the late 1980s in Lamb Bank he met Diana Griffiths who was beginning to learn her trade as a writer with Barstow’s help.^[4] He with Connie Kershaw separated in 1990, though never divorced. Stan started a new life with his ex-pupil Diana Griffiths, now a writer in her own right, with eight original plays and nearly twenty dramatisations to her credit. Later he lived in Pontardawe, South Wales, with his partner, Diana Griffiths.^[5] Stan Barstow died on the 1st August 2011, aged 83. Connie Barstow stayed in Ossett, living at Millfields off Wesley Street, before spending her last years in nursing home in Wakefield. She died on the 9th May 2012 aged 84.

Bibliography[]

Novels

• A Kind of Loving (1960)
• Ask Me Tomorrow (1962)
• Joby (1964)
• The Watchers on the Shore (1966)
• A Raging Calm (1968)
• Through the Green Woods (1968)
• The Right True End (1976)
• A Brother's Tale (1980)
• Just You Wait and See (1986)
• B-Movie (1987)
• Give Us This Day (1989)
• Next of Kin (1991)

Short Story Collections

• The Desperados and Other Stories (1961)
• The Human Element and Other Stories (1969)
• A Season with Eros (1971)
• A Casual Acquaintance and Other Stories (1976)
• The Glad Eye and Other Stories (1984)
• The Likes of Us: Stories of Five Decades (2013)

Plays

• Stringer's Last Stand (1972) (with Alfred Bradley)
• Joby: a Television Play (1977)
• 'We Could Always Fit a Sidecar' in Out of the Air: Five Plays for Radio (1978)
• The Human Element, and Albert's Part: Two Television Plays (1984)

Autobiography

• In My Own Good Time (2001)

References[]

External links[]

• Website containing detailed information
• Stan Barstow at IMDb
• Barstow's radio plays
• Daily Telegraph obituary
• The Independent obituary
• The Guardian obituary
• Guardian Review of "The Likes of Us, collected short stories, published 2013.
• Archival Material at Leeds University Library

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