Still in Nottingham, Karel mentioned that an actor who might be good as Arthur Seaton was playing Edgar in King Lear at Stratford. My opinion seemed to be wanted, so seats were booked. I hadn’t been to the place since riding in on the back of an army lorry from RAF Snitterfield to see Ann Hathaway’s cottage, and the Memorial Theatre from the outside. How are the lowly lifted! This time Ruth and I were trundled there in Karel’s Morris van.
Albert Finney flailed and muttered in half darkness as Edgar, and while not difficult to imagine him as Arthur Seaton, it was obviously impossible to find an actor who matched the appearance of the person so vividly pictured when writing the book. Karel, and Miriam Brickman the casting director, were convinced that Finney could do the job, and they turned out to be right.
In September The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner received a Recommendation from the Book Society, the more prestigious Choice being awarded to something about the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Tony Godwin, a peppery little media genius, printed a review in the journal of the Book Society by Penelope Mortimer, which had a drawing of me on the cover by Andrew Freeth. In the same issue he published my story ‘Uncle Ernest’. A telegram of congratulations from Rosica was followed by many favourable reviews, those stories being praised which had been sent back by so many magazines (except for one in France) during the last ten years, though I was too gratified by the reception of the book to be more than a little wry about that.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was published in the United States, and Pan Books was about to issue a paperback. A Swedish firm was first in line for translation rights, and enquiries were coming in from many other countries. The original hardback was in its fourth printing, sales in the first year close to six thousand.
In Whitwell we met Betty Allsop, who was helping Peter Benenson to stand for Labour at the coming General Election. We also agreed to do something, as did a few others in the village, including our neighbour, the painter Terry Harjula. My speech for Labour at Hitchin was an embarrassing peroration that went on far too long. The local atmosphere was hostile when we tried canvassing, and though our house was plastered with Labour posters my heart wasn’t in it because Labour used the Suez campaign as something with which to berate the Conservatives.
In November, a few days after reading ‘On Saturday Afternoon’ at the BBC, Ruth and I were married at Marylebone Town Hall. In neither of our diaries is the fact recorded, which may have been because our long engagement had been going on for ten years. With Harry Fainlight, Lillie Gore, and Karel Reisz, we went to Soho afterwards for a celebration lunch.
The main change from an expatriate life to that of living in England as someone who had become accustomed to the idea that every novel he wrote would be printed without let or hindrance, had gone smoothly enough. This was due both to luck and a certain amount of industry, as well as a backlog of material from the previous few years. Apart from poems and stories, and sections for insertion in Key to the Door, little was being written that was completely new, because I was working on the film script of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Having no more anxiety about money seemed the one sure confirmation of success. Another, perhaps, was being invited to tea by the fascinatingly fragile Blanche Knopf on a visit from the United States. When I was threatened with expulsion from the restaurant for not wearing a tie, and ready to walk out at such stupid intolerance, Blanche charmed (or perhaps bribed) the waiters into letting me stay.
Harry Saltzman was having difficulty raising the 95,000 pounds needed to make the film of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Without someone as hardworking, knowledgeable and dedicated the project would have been dead-stopped. Many of the financial people, on reading the screen treatment, said that cinema-goers wanted to see comedy, adventure and musicals, and not a story set in conditions with which they were too familiar, and from which if they had any sense they would only want to escape. Nevertheless, Harry obtained the money, and assembled a team which could not help but make a good film: Johnny Dankworth wrote the music, Freddie Francis was the photographer, Seth Holt the editor, and Karel Reisz the director. Miriam Brickman chose Albert Finney, Rachel Roberts, Shirley Ann Field, Norman Rossington, Hylda Baker and Bryan Pringle as the cast.
Filming began in the spring of 1960, and in Nottingham my brother Michael, a musician in his spare time, played the part of a pub drummer, while various members of the family walked up and down as extras. The old familiar backyards and streets were used on location, and my mother enjoyed making tea for the stars as they came and went.
In January we moved to Hampstead, into the top flat of Karel Reisz’s house once occupied by his father-in-law, A.E. Coppard, who had written such excellent short stories. Working in his study, I did four Sundays of novel reviewing for Reynolds News, but did not extend the stint, because it was hard to put in the time necessary to read every one of the half dozen books for each article.
We bought a lease on a flat near Notting Hill Gate, a part of London we have always lived in except for a brief and unsuccessful experiment in Clapham. When the Aldermaston March came into London the temptation to join it was irresistible, though my views on nuclear disarmament were far from unreserved, believing that the West should give up weapons only if Soviet Russia agreed to do the same. My opinion was also different from those who wore sackcloth and ashes over the use of the atomic bomb against Japan in August 1945. The raids had been an unfortunate occurrence but, war being war, the bombs probably caused less casualties than if an invasion and bitter fighting had taken place, though at the time I hadn’t been altogether happy because the war had ended before I could get into it. Japan and Germany would certainly have used such a bomb against the Allies if they had had it, and then the guilt would have been on their side, had they been capable of feeling it. All the same, it seemed senseless now to have such weapons in the world. On starting a book the question would nag at me as to whether the outbreak of a nuclear war would prevent me from completing it.
The Aldermaston March was in any case a convivial occasion. One met people like Christopher Logue, whose play The Lily-White Boys had been so successful at the Royal Court; Michael Hastings, the novelist and playwright; Clancy Segal, whose book about a Staffordshire coalminer, Weekend in Dinlock, I had written about for the Evening Standard; and Penelope Mortimer, who had so enthusiastically reviewed The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.
Some Sunday afternoons we went to the Hampstead salon of Ella Winter and Donald Ogden Stewart, American members of the Hollywood Ten who had been persecuted in the United States during the McCarthy era. Don was witty, graceful and debonair, while Ella (who had been married to Lincoln Steffens: ‘I have seen the future, and it works!’) had eyes which gave an expression of vulnerability, of wanting to believe well of the world, and hoping it would repay such trust in kind. They were a hospitable couple, and at their magnificent old house we made contact with such writers as James Aldridge, Cedric Belfrage, Kenneth Tynan, Elaine Dundy and Sally Belfrage. One could also look at the rare collection of paintings by Paul Klee.