Obituary: Stan Barstow, novelist

Stan Barstow, Novelist.

Born: 28 June, 1928, near Wakefield, Yorkshire.

Died: 1 August, 2011, in South Wales, aged 83.

IN THE Sixties, Stan Barstow depicted working-class life in mining towns with a poignant realism. His direct style of writing contributed to the advance in the working- class hero and the move away from London-orientated books and drama.

His most influential novel was A Kind of Loving, which he wrote in 1960: its hero, Vic Brown, was an engineering draughtsman trapped in a loveless marriage in a forlorn society. Barstow's vivid prose conjured up the futility of such a life and its consequences on individuals.

It was made into a powerful film by John Schlesinger and both book and film are considered a major influence on the development of the Swinging Sixties and a more liberal society. It is now set text in British schools.

A Kind of Loving was the first of a trilogy, which Barstow wrote over the next 16 years (The Watchers on the Shore in1966 and The Right True End, 1976)), that followed his working-class hero through marriage, divorce and his escape to the pressures of. Sixties London.

Stan Barstow showed talent at Ossett Grammar School, but left at 16 to become an apprentice draughtsman at a local engineering firm. He spent much of his time in the library and read constantly. He wrote short stories in the Fifties - some were broadcast by the BBC - one, The Search for Tommy Flynn was published in 1957.

It was A Kind of Loving, however, that changed his life. Barstow wrote about the inward-looking life that he knew only too well. He recalled later that he had read the short stories of HE Bates about, "inarticulate people. Suddenly I was seeing the magic in Barnsley."

Vic Brown, however, was no Angry Young Man but concerned and frustrated by the humdrum nature - the sheer boredom - of everyday life.

At a stroke, Barstow broke down social barriers and wrote about subjects (especially sex) that had not, until then, been mentioned.

Vic, for example, goes to the local chemist and, too shy to ask for a condom, emerges with a bottle of Lucozade. The girlfriend gets pregnant, he is then forced into marriage, living with her mother - Barstow captured the relentless lifestyle with a painful agony. His novel was down-to-earth, unsentimental and caught the mood of a volatile society.

As well as bringing to his writing a deep insight about social problems, Barstow had an insouciant and stylish wit.

He had the knack of summing up a situation with a telling phrase. In a lecture Barstow once commented: "There may be a lot of second and third-rate writers, but there a hell of a sight more second and third-rate readers."

A Kind of Loving was adapted for the cinema in 1962, with Alan Bates as Vic, who captured the wayward character with a stark reality. The book and the film, Bates said "had a lot of human understanding and reflected the whole pot-luck chance of life. They were both absolutely about life as it was lived."

In 1962, Barstow published Ask Me Tomorrow and two year's later a children's book, Joby, about an 11-year-old at the outbreak of the Second World War. That was turned into a successful television play starring Patrick Stewart.

Many of his books were set in Yorkshire and all had the feel of authority about them: Barstow preferred to write about his own experiences.

This grass-root knowledge brought him a loyal and large readership and, unlike many other Sixties' pop and literary stars, Barstow did not forsake his native Dales.

That celebration of his heritage was reflected in his comment: "To hoe one's own row diligently, thus seeking out the universal in the particular, brings more worthwhile satisfaction than the frantic pursuit of a largely phoney jet-age internationalism."Barstow continued to explore northern industrial family life and Watchers on the Shore and The Right True End were adapted by Granada for a television series in 1982 starring Clive Wood and 17-year-old unknown Joanne Whalley.

In 1990, after 39 years of marriage, Barstow separated from his wife, Constance Kershaw. He settled for many years in Haworth, home of the Bronts. More recently he had lived in Pontardawe in South Wales, with his partner Diana Griffiths, who adapted many of his stories for the BBC.

Barstow remained a proud Yorkshireman, but also displayed a sense of conformity when he was a castaway on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs in 1986. He chose mostly well-known classical music - his favourite being Elgar's Second Symphony; but, significantly, his luxury item was paper and pencils.

Barstow wrote his autobiography, In My Own Good Time, in 2001.

Stan Barstow is survived by his son and daughter from his marriage and by Diana Griffiths.