Alan Sillitoe was born on March 4, 1928 and grew up in the slums of the industrial city of Nottingham. He began to write while in the Royal Air Force, stationed in Malaya. He is best known for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958), which won the Author's Club Prize for the best British novel of 1958 and The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (1959), which won Britain's Hawthornden Prize for 1960. Both books were adapted into films in 1960 and 1962 respectively. His other works include The Death of William Posters (1965), Tree on Fire (1967), Travels in Nihilon (1971), and Raw Material (1972). He died on April 25, 2010 at the age of 82.