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Room at the Top, [88] 67

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Telling it Straight

Anthony Wells on John Braine Room at the Top

‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive . . .’ Well, it would be hard to argue it was a revolution, I suppose – that ‘new wave’ of English novels of my youth. But it was definitely thrilling to be reading new fiction in the late 1950s and early ’60s; and to be a young man buying those novels as soon as the booksellers would sell you them (if I remember rightly, once you were, or looked, 14) came pretty close to literary heaven. It wasn’t just the sex, though the authors of this new wave of literature seemed keen to treat the subject in as matter-of-fact a way as possible. It was also the settings, which were northern, provincial and predominantly working-class and were depicted as frankly as were the characters’ love affairs.