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Saturday Night and Sunday Morning hits 50

17 November 2008

'It's something that comes from within you, the need to write. You're born with it....

I think all those years of writing before being published had taught me to write with precision. I didn't want to indulge in purple passages and overwrite and use too many words. I knew that the voice and tone was just right. I had found my own way, which is just as well.

I'm pragmatic about the first two books.They got me going and have allowed me to write for all these years. As long as I'd had a roof over my head and food on the table, I would have carried on writing whetherI was published or not.'

Alan Sillitoe in The Times