It's the easy way out. I always thought I'd do it some time. I can have an idea and let it sink down into the mulch of my mind and God knows what huggermugger and argy-bargy it's up to down there, but it can reappear 10, even 25 years later. So it was that Arthur Seaton nagged away at me. I wanted to write about a woman whose husband had been injured in an industrial action and she looks after him for 20 years.
Birthday is a triptych.
Sillitoe is a great believer in stoicism. When he talks about his own childhood he refuses any kind of self-pity. He feels sorry for the father who used to beat him because, 'poor chap', he was doing the best he could, in his way. He tried to be a good father to his two children, both grown up now. He loved them, certainly - but I'd have to ask them how he did as a father.