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This Sporting Life
When originally published this was described as an exceptional first novel because the characters are concerned with expressing themselves in physical rather than emotional or intellectual terms. The world in which the story is set is that of professional Rugby League in a Norther English industrial city, and spans several years in the life of narrator Arthur Machin.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1960
24 people are currently reading
1060 people want to read
About the author
David Storey
85 books29 followersDavid Storey was an English playwright, screenwriter, award-winning novelist and a former professional rugby league player. Storey was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire in 1933, and studied at the Slade School of Art.
His first two novels were both published in 1960, a few months apart: This Sporting Life, which won the Macmillan Fiction Award and was adapted for an award-winning 1963 film, and Flight Into Camden, which won the Somerset Maugham Award. His next novel, Radcliffe (1963) met with widespread critical acclaim in both England and the United States, and during the 1960s and 70s, Storey became widely known for his plays, several of which achieved great success.
He returned to fiction in 1972 with Pasmore, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award and was short-listed for the Booker Prize. Saville (1976) won the Booker Prize and has been hailed by at least one critic as the best of all the Booker winners. His last novel was Thin-Ice Skater (2004).
David Storey lived in London. He was married and had four children.
His first two novels were both published in 1960, a few months apart: This Sporting Life, which won the Macmillan Fiction Award and was adapted for an award-winning 1963 film, and Flight Into Camden, which won the Somerset Maugham Award. His next novel, Radcliffe (1963) met with widespread critical acclaim in both England and the United States, and during the 1960s and 70s, Storey became widely known for his plays, several of which achieved great success.
He returned to fiction in 1972 with Pasmore, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award and was short-listed for the Booker Prize. Saville (1976) won the Booker Prize and has been hailed by at least one critic as the best of all the Booker winners. His last novel was Thin-Ice Skater (2004).
David Storey lived in London. He was married and had four children.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews
June 20, 2020
I ran into Arthur Machin in a pub in Rotherham one night in 1964.
I bought him a pint and said “Arthur, I’m really sorry but I can’t finish your book.”
It took some nerve. I mean, it’s well known he has a violent streak and he’s a big bloke. Could knock me right through the window and never even notice.
He looked down at me and said “Oh and why is that then?” He was staring gloomily into the mid distance. He did a lot of that. Along with slowly drinking a pint of beer. And also fast drinking a pint of beer.
“Well,” I said, “it’s all about a tough uneducated working class lad who has only one ticket out of his hopeless grim Northern English slough of despond, his two fisted aggression and enormous bulk. So he gets to be a local rugby star.”
“Well, I know that, it’s my story. It’s a true story. What was wrong with it?”
“Well, yes Arthur, I know it’s all true, but…. sorry to say your voice got on my nerves. All that first person noticing. People just don’t notice as much as that. I could take any page … here for instance :
She got off her knees and lifted a large bowl of dough on to the table. The smell of it leavening filled the room. She dusted the baking board with flour and pulled the dough out of the earthenware bowl and began to cut it."
“Well, that’s exactly what happened.”
“Ok here’s another bit – I dropped off the bus… I got off half-way up the hill to Primstone, just when the lights were pricking the valley, making it bleed with its slow night glow. I mean, really, making it bleed. What kind of talk is that from an uneducated lout? "
“Well, okay, I admit David Storey made me put that stuff in. I didn’t want to. I never talk like that.”
“Ah, that makes more sense."
“He said all those London types would love it, and he wasn’t wrong. They like working class bruisers to have an unexpected poetic side. Look at Mellors the gamekeeper in D H Lawrence’s notorious 1928 novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”
This conversation was going nowhere. I scrabbled around for something else to day.
“Oh by the way, Arthur,” I said. “Here’s something you might find interesting. You know that actor who plays you in the movie?”
“Yes - Richard Harris – playing me propelled this brooding young actor into a well-deserved international career.”
“Yes … you won’t know this but he gets to be best friends with a songwriter called Jimmy Webb in a couple of years and this Webb guy persuades him to record a whole album of his songs, one of which is a seven minute elaborate kitsch masterpiece called “Macarthur Park” that many people in future decades think of as the worst record ever made.”
“Wait a minute, how do you know that then ?”
“I come from the future, Arthur, where there are way too many highly unlikely first person narrators just like you.” I finished my pint and said. “I’m sorry I didn’t like your book, no hard feelings. And don’t tell anybody, but “Macarthur Park” is one of my favourite records.”
I came away from my chat with Arthur thinking I probably needed to sign up for a suspension of disbelief training course.
I bought him a pint and said “Arthur, I’m really sorry but I can’t finish your book.”
It took some nerve. I mean, it’s well known he has a violent streak and he’s a big bloke. Could knock me right through the window and never even notice.
He looked down at me and said “Oh and why is that then?” He was staring gloomily into the mid distance. He did a lot of that. Along with slowly drinking a pint of beer. And also fast drinking a pint of beer.
“Well,” I said, “it’s all about a tough uneducated working class lad who has only one ticket out of his hopeless grim Northern English slough of despond, his two fisted aggression and enormous bulk. So he gets to be a local rugby star.”
“Well, I know that, it’s my story. It’s a true story. What was wrong with it?”
“Well, yes Arthur, I know it’s all true, but…. sorry to say your voice got on my nerves. All that first person noticing. People just don’t notice as much as that. I could take any page … here for instance :
She got off her knees and lifted a large bowl of dough on to the table. The smell of it leavening filled the room. She dusted the baking board with flour and pulled the dough out of the earthenware bowl and began to cut it."
“Well, that’s exactly what happened.”
“Ok here’s another bit – I dropped off the bus… I got off half-way up the hill to Primstone, just when the lights were pricking the valley, making it bleed with its slow night glow. I mean, really, making it bleed. What kind of talk is that from an uneducated lout? "
“Well, okay, I admit David Storey made me put that stuff in. I didn’t want to. I never talk like that.”
“Ah, that makes more sense."
“He said all those London types would love it, and he wasn’t wrong. They like working class bruisers to have an unexpected poetic side. Look at Mellors the gamekeeper in D H Lawrence’s notorious 1928 novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”
This conversation was going nowhere. I scrabbled around for something else to day.
“Oh by the way, Arthur,” I said. “Here’s something you might find interesting. You know that actor who plays you in the movie?”
“Yes - Richard Harris – playing me propelled this brooding young actor into a well-deserved international career.”
“Yes … you won’t know this but he gets to be best friends with a songwriter called Jimmy Webb in a couple of years and this Webb guy persuades him to record a whole album of his songs, one of which is a seven minute elaborate kitsch masterpiece called “Macarthur Park” that many people in future decades think of as the worst record ever made.”
“Wait a minute, how do you know that then ?”
“I come from the future, Arthur, where there are way too many highly unlikely first person narrators just like you.” I finished my pint and said. “I’m sorry I didn’t like your book, no hard feelings. And don’t tell anybody, but “Macarthur Park” is one of my favourite records.”
I came away from my chat with Arthur thinking I probably needed to sign up for a suspension of disbelief training course.
November 29, 2025
People make love how they live. The meticulous pay attention to detail. The sensible don't fuss the small stuff. There are as many ways as there are people. What lovers cannot do is escape themselves.
Arthur Machin is a rugby player. To make a living, he runs into walls of human flesh. He loses six front teeth in the opening pages, but greater losses lie ahead. When he falls for a widow with two young children, tougher walls than skin and bones block his way. Grief and anger at the factory death of her husband toughens Margaret Hammond from ever loving again.
Rugby may be played at Eton College, but in this northern English town, it's not a game. It's a way out of factories - in the author's case, mines - or so it seems at first. Some mines are of the heart. Dark and closed, they remain as hard as rock. Margaret Hammond is a match for Arthur Machin in more ways than one. Read it or watch the film which is every minute as tough
Arthur Machin is a rugby player. To make a living, he runs into walls of human flesh. He loses six front teeth in the opening pages, but greater losses lie ahead. When he falls for a widow with two young children, tougher walls than skin and bones block his way. Grief and anger at the factory death of her husband toughens Margaret Hammond from ever loving again.
Rugby may be played at Eton College, but in this northern English town, it's not a game. It's a way out of factories - in the author's case, mines - or so it seems at first. Some mines are of the heart. Dark and closed, they remain as hard as rock. Margaret Hammond is a match for Arthur Machin in more ways than one. Read it or watch the film which is every minute as tough
October 24, 2015
The north of England in the 1950s, Arthur (not that other great Northern bellower given to us by Alan Sillitoe) wants out of the flat on your back, working yourself to death, working class lifestyle that he was born in to and the only way he can see to escape is through excelling at sport. He's got some physicality going for him and he's gonna make the most of it by running out for the local professional Rugby League team.
Whilst there are some excellently written sporting sequences, they are few and far between, Storey's tale looking instead at the power of celebrity, the attitudes of the working classes and the differences between the classes in general, the psychological conflict of being a manly man struggling with his repressed emotions in a world where men are supposed to be one thing and one thing only and naturally something of the bildungsroman as Arthur faces up to getting too old for what he's been doing.
Along the way we come across debauched parties, political intrigues at the heart of running a professional sports team as a committee of powerful local businessmen, ill fated love affairs, misery, shame, and stand-up knock-down screaming matches, the whole thing written with great observational skill, presenting the self sabotaging attitudes that still prevail amongst the English class structures almost sixty years later and despite the shift towards the "famous for nothing" reality TV culture that people aspire to the distrust of the working class boy made good is greater than ever.
As with all of my experiences exploring Britain's Angry Young Men literature of the 50s and 60s I have been enthralled with the sense of time and place that is created by the talented authors and seemingly more so than other eras of literature these shine as priceless documents of social history.
Whilst there are some excellently written sporting sequences, they are few and far between, Storey's tale looking instead at the power of celebrity, the attitudes of the working classes and the differences between the classes in general, the psychological conflict of being a manly man struggling with his repressed emotions in a world where men are supposed to be one thing and one thing only and naturally something of the bildungsroman as Arthur faces up to getting too old for what he's been doing.
Along the way we come across debauched parties, political intrigues at the heart of running a professional sports team as a committee of powerful local businessmen, ill fated love affairs, misery, shame, and stand-up knock-down screaming matches, the whole thing written with great observational skill, presenting the self sabotaging attitudes that still prevail amongst the English class structures almost sixty years later and despite the shift towards the "famous for nothing" reality TV culture that people aspire to the distrust of the working class boy made good is greater than ever.
As with all of my experiences exploring Britain's Angry Young Men literature of the 50s and 60s I have been enthralled with the sense of time and place that is created by the talented authors and seemingly more so than other eras of literature these shine as priceless documents of social history.
August 12, 2016
Set in a northern town/city and featuring its Rugby team, Arthur Machin in particular. The game is dirty and almost everything surrounding the team is too – politics and intrigue included. Arthur, a strong “animal” on the field is anything but when off it. He's also pretty unlucky.
At one stage he considers that his unsatisfactory love life may mirror that of his parents.
The novel ends abruptly and was not for me, therefore, entirely satisfying. It seemed merely to imply that life goes on, sporting or otherwise. I felt there were 'shades of gay' running through it, albeit in frustrated relationships. Perhaps I read too much into the closeness of men bound together by Rugby. Or was I too conscious of Radcliffe, one of Storey's other works I'd read prior to this?
At one stage he considers that his unsatisfactory love life may mirror that of his parents.
The novel ends abruptly and was not for me, therefore, entirely satisfying. It seemed merely to imply that life goes on, sporting or otherwise. I felt there were 'shades of gay' running through it, albeit in frustrated relationships. Perhaps I read too much into the closeness of men bound together by Rugby. Or was I too conscious of Radcliffe, one of Storey's other works I'd read prior to this?
May 26, 2009
This should not appeal to me - it's about a misogynistic rugby player (I hate rugby after being forced to play it at school) who can only express himself through violence, and has a destructive relationship with his landlady. But I loved it, one of the best British 'kitchen sink' novels (see also Sillitoe, Barstow etc), which I grew up with (Can you 'grow up with' books?). The film (adapted by the author and Lindsay Anderson's first feature) ain't bad either. (I can't stop using brackets).
July 15, 2021
I read this at age 15 when I was briefly captain of the school rugby team. It rang true then, and it still rings true today - you can almost feel the fillings in your teeth loosening from the descriptions of match rugby.
The novel - Storey's first - more than holds its own against the similar Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.
Storey also wrote the Booker-Prize winner Saville, which I recommend.
The novel - Storey's first - more than holds its own against the similar Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.
Storey also wrote the Booker-Prize winner Saville, which I recommend.
February 13, 2025
David Storey was the quintessential risen-from-the-working-class writer and artist. Born in 1933 he grew up in Wakefield of true working-class stock but aspired to be a painter. He went to art school in London and paid his way by playing professional rugby league every weekend. As such he was an exile from his roots and both his environments and must have felt the outsider. This Sporting Life was his debut novel written in 1960 and was a fine contribution to the ‘Angry Young Men’ of the 50’s British art scene which might include Alan Sillitoe (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958), and
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner
(1959)),John Osborne (Look Back in Anger (1956) and
The Entertainer
(1957) and John Braine (Room at the Top (1957). These are books and plays about social realism in the 50’s in England – the grim gritty reality of post-war British life before the swinging 60’s kicked in.
Storey, as an outsider and a pro rugby league player clearly knew what he was talking about. He is a clear observer of 50’s mores and the feel (and angst) enveloping the British working class having come through the war and seeing little that changed around them (well…. apart from the National Health and Nationalisation of Rail and Coal). Storey endows Arthur Machin, his protagonist, with a degree more intelligence than his male companions and fellow players but he lives in that world and really it is part of him. This is a failed love story. Machin rents a room from the widow Mrs Hammond who has two small children to bring up. Her husband died through an industrial accident (which other people believe had an element of suicide to it) and she received no compensation or life insurance from the death. Their relationship is to start one of landlady and tenant. Machin revels in the money he makes from playing professional sport. This is the 50’s northern England so its all flat-caps and amateurism in a professional paying sport where people are determined not to stand out. To take it all too seriously was to be non-northern and certainly 'not-British, old sport'. This doesn’t satisfy Arthur and he yearns for, believes in and seeks something beyond the everyday. His buying a second-hand car takes his relationship with Mrs Hammond and the children to another level and they begin an affair. Mrs Hammond is portrayed as a hard-bitten character ready for an argument rather than tenderness and she is worn down by the lot that has been cast to her.
What makes this book stand out and be enduring even now is the clear insight and observation into working class thought and feeling. Sex is there but its surreptitious, known about but acknowledged in a nudge-nudge wink-wink kind of manner. Mrs Hammond considers she is seen as 'the kept woman' (but accepts Arthur's gifts of a fur coat and a television set - a rare luxury in 50s Britain) and believes she is seen as little more than 'a common prostitute', while Arthur's standing in the local community as a big bloke and professional rugby player rises. His best mate Maurice is forced into marriage when his girlfriend becomes pregnant. There is so much within the book which is about the unsaid, the tittle-tattle of gossip which defined working relationships till the 60's rebelled against it all.
This is a well-written and keenly observed book which has stood the test of time but is probably of little interest outside of the British Isles. The American equivalents would be John Fante and Charles Bukowski. Given the interest shown in works from the other ‘Angry Young Men’ of the 50s it was not surprising that Lindsay Anderson translated the book to film in 1963. The film is at least as good as the book and marked the starring debut of Richard Harris (for which he won the 1963 Cannes Film Festival Best Actor award) as Arthur Machin. All of these films and books are part of a British genre known as ‘Kitchen Sink’ which even found its way into visual art with the painting of John Bratby.
Storey, as an outsider and a pro rugby league player clearly knew what he was talking about. He is a clear observer of 50’s mores and the feel (and angst) enveloping the British working class having come through the war and seeing little that changed around them (well…. apart from the National Health and Nationalisation of Rail and Coal). Storey endows Arthur Machin, his protagonist, with a degree more intelligence than his male companions and fellow players but he lives in that world and really it is part of him. This is a failed love story. Machin rents a room from the widow Mrs Hammond who has two small children to bring up. Her husband died through an industrial accident (which other people believe had an element of suicide to it) and she received no compensation or life insurance from the death. Their relationship is to start one of landlady and tenant. Machin revels in the money he makes from playing professional sport. This is the 50’s northern England so its all flat-caps and amateurism in a professional paying sport where people are determined not to stand out. To take it all too seriously was to be non-northern and certainly 'not-British, old sport'. This doesn’t satisfy Arthur and he yearns for, believes in and seeks something beyond the everyday. His buying a second-hand car takes his relationship with Mrs Hammond and the children to another level and they begin an affair. Mrs Hammond is portrayed as a hard-bitten character ready for an argument rather than tenderness and she is worn down by the lot that has been cast to her.
What makes this book stand out and be enduring even now is the clear insight and observation into working class thought and feeling. Sex is there but its surreptitious, known about but acknowledged in a nudge-nudge wink-wink kind of manner. Mrs Hammond considers she is seen as 'the kept woman' (but accepts Arthur's gifts of a fur coat and a television set - a rare luxury in 50s Britain) and believes she is seen as little more than 'a common prostitute', while Arthur's standing in the local community as a big bloke and professional rugby player rises. His best mate Maurice is forced into marriage when his girlfriend becomes pregnant. There is so much within the book which is about the unsaid, the tittle-tattle of gossip which defined working relationships till the 60's rebelled against it all.
This is a well-written and keenly observed book which has stood the test of time but is probably of little interest outside of the British Isles. The American equivalents would be John Fante and Charles Bukowski. Given the interest shown in works from the other ‘Angry Young Men’ of the 50s it was not surprising that Lindsay Anderson translated the book to film in 1963. The film is at least as good as the book and marked the starring debut of Richard Harris (for which he won the 1963 Cannes Film Festival Best Actor award) as Arthur Machin. All of these films and books are part of a British genre known as ‘Kitchen Sink’ which even found its way into visual art with the painting of John Bratby.
April 14, 2019
Since sport requires leisure time and a surplus of money to spend on it, we can thank the Industrial Revolution for our weekend off to watch football, motor racing, tennis or rugby; and for the money to buy the necessary ticket or TV subscription. The 1850s were the crucial decade, when mills in northern England started to close at 2pm on Saturdays. According to A.N. Wilson in The Victorians, Wordsells of Birmingham was one of the first factories to give its workers Saturday afternoon off. It is no coincidence that the 1850s were the time when large scale sport really began to develop. Horse racing grew hugely in popularity with sixty two new horse racing meetings added to the calendar. Meanwhile, rugby and football were evolving rapidly into the games we know today. And as sporting events became established, trains were available to take people to them, thanks to the boom in railway building.
A century later we come to David Storey’s This Sporting Life, a novel about a factory worker who gets signed by a Rugby League team in a 1950s northern town. This Sporting Life might be set a hundred years after the Industrial Revolution kickstarted sport, but it is clear that sport and industry still go together. Rugby League is a kind of sporting heavy industry. This is a game played in vast stadiums by big men who have specialised jobs on the field, just as they follow specialised trades in their factories. Rugby, a sequence of systematic, repeated moments, is in effect a mill for producing sporting excitement, with sparks flying on the pitch as clouds of steam from nearby cooling towers drift overhead.
Even so, there is still a sense in This Sporting Life that Rugby League strives for something beyond the daily grind. The players are seen as heroes by local sports fans, reminiscent of those Greek heroes who took part in running and chariot races in Homer’s Iliad. The town’s gods - wealthy industrialists rather than deities on a mountain - run the club. Just as in Homer, the gods support some heroes at the expense of others, using their influence to trip up or push forward individual athletes as they see fit.
This Sporting Life is really a study of what it is to be one of these modern sporting heroes. Seemingly living lives beyond those of ordinary mortals, they are admired wherever they go, receiving free stuff and fan mail. Yet, a famous player also seems something less than human. The narrator and central character, Arthur Machin, often remarks on feeling like some sort of ape man who doesn’t belong in normal society. One of his lady admirers actually calls him Tarzan. The contradiction of popularity and a feeling of exclusion causes havoc with Arthur’s personal life. In his gruff way he loves his landlady, the widowed Mrs Hammond. This troubled young woman becomes interested in Arthur when he makes the metamorphosis from ordinary factory worker to sports star. At the same time she is unable to view him as a normal man she could be with. She always seems worried that Arthur will be off with one of his many female fans. Nothing Arthur can say will convince Mrs Hammond otherwise. Arthur’s fellow players Frank and Maurice are fortunate in having wives who treat them as normal men.
This Sporting Life is a study of professional sport and the celebrity it brings. Published in 1960 it is an uncompromising tale, interesting in the context of sport history, and in its prescience about the kind of developments that would follow in sport and celebrity culture generally.
May 23, 2021
A confusing but not entirely unenjoyable read. David Storey's novel based on a Rugby League player living in an anonymous Northern town is beautifully detailed throughout and isn't afraid to give you a warts and all depiction of life in the North of England in the early sixties. His descriptions of the Rugby matches in particular are brilliantly on point and at times you could almost feel the aches and pains of the players as they battled their way through another mud soaked war.
However, the novel is also confusing in that it's main antagonist and narrator, Arthur Machin, is constantly seen as a villain by those around him but with no real apparent motive. Everyone he seems to care about evidently hates him even though from what we're shown throughout the book, he does very little to provoke such emotions. His relationship with Mrs. Hammond (his landlady) is particularly harrowing as we see him win her trust only to be flung to the curb against his will and to the detriment of both their lives with no real reason.
Whether or not this is a simply an example of how society has changed in the 60 or so years since the book was written, or simply that the book comes from the point of view of an unreliable narrator, I can't be sure, but reading with my 21st century ideals left me completely baffled as to what many of the issues even were, let alone why people were willing to ruin their lives for such seemingly arbitrary reasons.
All in all The Sporting Life is a good, if somewhat grubby coming of age story which encourages you to immerse yourself in the grime of the characters lives. At times the book does feel a little aimless and the odd behavioural swings some of the characters exhibit as well as the abrupt ending does make it feel a little bit slapdash in places but this is made up for by the vivid descriptive passages and some moments of well crafted dialogue. A good window into a world that barely exists anymore.
However, the novel is also confusing in that it's main antagonist and narrator, Arthur Machin, is constantly seen as a villain by those around him but with no real apparent motive. Everyone he seems to care about evidently hates him even though from what we're shown throughout the book, he does very little to provoke such emotions. His relationship with Mrs. Hammond (his landlady) is particularly harrowing as we see him win her trust only to be flung to the curb against his will and to the detriment of both their lives with no real reason.
Whether or not this is a simply an example of how society has changed in the 60 or so years since the book was written, or simply that the book comes from the point of view of an unreliable narrator, I can't be sure, but reading with my 21st century ideals left me completely baffled as to what many of the issues even were, let alone why people were willing to ruin their lives for such seemingly arbitrary reasons.
All in all The Sporting Life is a good, if somewhat grubby coming of age story which encourages you to immerse yourself in the grime of the characters lives. At times the book does feel a little aimless and the odd behavioural swings some of the characters exhibit as well as the abrupt ending does make it feel a little bit slapdash in places but this is made up for by the vivid descriptive passages and some moments of well crafted dialogue. A good window into a world that barely exists anymore.
March 6, 2014
BBC BLURB: As part of Radio 4's celebration of British New Wave film and cinema, Johnny Vegas directs a feature-length radio reversioning of This Sporting Life - marking the 50th anniversary of the classic Lindsay Anderson film which starred the young Richard Harris.
This new version is adapted by Andrew Lynch, directly from David Storey's novel. A surprisingly beautiful, yet repressed, northern drama, it contrasts the deep wants and needs of protagonist Arthur Machin with the stark aggression of the rugby pitch.
The sounds are rich - the rugby scrum, the atmosphere of the match, the changing rooms, the dancehall, struggles in the bedroom, arguments by the kitchen hearth.
James Purefoy plays Arthur Machin and Emily Watson is Mrs Hammond, accompanied on the touchline by an ensemble cast including John Thomson, Julia Davis, Sheridan Smith and Philip Jackson.
Commentary for the Rugby League game-play is provided by commentator Ray French, who witnessed some of the filming of the 1963 film with Richard Harris.
Dramatised from David Storey's original novel by Andrew Lynch
Producer: Sally Harrison Director: Johnny Vegas
A Woolyback production for BBC Radio 4.
'There are three types of athlete: the nervous, the scientific, and the animal.'
Original Coronation Street Theme Tune
May 9, 2012
Yeah, yeah kitchen sink blah-de-blah. It's a bit like an updated DH Lawrence - impenetrable regional accent, varying levels of looming tragedy which the protagonists do their level best to run (not walk) towards, and a healthy dollop of knowing your place.
There is nowt so queer as folk, but Arthur is a pretty good emblem for the single-mindedness of a successful athlete, only his success not only lifts him off the factory floor, but into a new social stratosphere. His parents are non-existent until halfway through the book, and he doesn't really have any friends - with such a one-track mind, no wonder Mrs Hammond wasn't having owt, never mind her own mental fragility. However, it's a temporary career trajectory, which partly explains Arthur's fin de siecle attitude. But whilst he tries to make hay, it's long term happiness which eludes him, and pretty much everybody involved in Primstone City.
Everyday tragic, but Storey's ability to get the kaleidoscope furore/organised violence of the rugby field down onto paper is particularly breathtaking.
There is nowt so queer as folk, but Arthur is a pretty good emblem for the single-mindedness of a successful athlete, only his success not only lifts him off the factory floor, but into a new social stratosphere. His parents are non-existent until halfway through the book, and he doesn't really have any friends - with such a one-track mind, no wonder Mrs Hammond wasn't having owt, never mind her own mental fragility. However, it's a temporary career trajectory, which partly explains Arthur's fin de siecle attitude. But whilst he tries to make hay, it's long term happiness which eludes him, and pretty much everybody involved in Primstone City.
Everyday tragic, but Storey's ability to get the kaleidoscope furore/organised violence of the rugby field down onto paper is particularly breathtaking.
October 26, 2011
It's post-war northern England, and love is not building a bridge.
We have a boy in love with a dinosaur.
Dinosaur wrings her hands over beef dripping on the way back from cleaning net curtains in the outside lav, and says things like "What will the neighbours think if we get above our station?" Poor thing doesn't know that they are going to make everything okay by inventing the 1960s.
Boy, successful at rugby football and fending off weird gays and their sexually frustrated beards, insists on buying dinosaur extravagant things, like television sets.
It's "The Wayne Rooney story" – but with rugby and not soccer.
Good fun, but there seemed to be a bit too much of it.
We have a boy in love with a dinosaur.
Dinosaur wrings her hands over beef dripping on the way back from cleaning net curtains in the outside lav, and says things like "What will the neighbours think if we get above our station?" Poor thing doesn't know that they are going to make everything okay by inventing the 1960s.
Boy, successful at rugby football and fending off weird gays and their sexually frustrated beards, insists on buying dinosaur extravagant things, like television sets.
It's "The Wayne Rooney story" – but with rugby and not soccer.
Good fun, but there seemed to be a bit too much of it.
October 31, 2017
Bleak novel set in post-war Northern England about a Rugby League player. The story held my interest; the northern accent was not difficult to understand. But in summary the usual "kitchen sink" kind of a novel involving an inarticulate working-class character who cannot express his emotions without violence or escape his fate in life.
I suspect the common usage of the word "frog" by the characters stood for something else (the f word).
I suspect the common usage of the word "frog" by the characters stood for something else (the f word).
July 7, 2019
I love these British Kitchen Sink stories from the 50's and 60's I think they are a brilliant moment in literature and film. All the big themes are here, working class lad wants something more but is held back, ambition is frowned upon by the local community, nothing works out as planned and women complicate things even more. Brilliant. I love it.
June 4, 2014
Its grim up north.
November 23, 2014
Actually, it was the film I was wanting to see but after a fruitless search and a longer wait, I thought I'd just settle for the book. I have a fondness for this period of British history, a time spanning roughly between the end of the war and England winning the (soccer) World Cup in 1966. I put soccer in parenthesis mindfully as the sport in this novel is rugby league yet is referred to frequently as "football", whereas at one point "soccer" is mentioned in differentiation to "rugby football". Now, we played rugby, or "rugger", at school and never once called it football; football was what we called "soccer" and it was most definitely not called that.
Okay, so the reason this period interests me is because it's very recent history, not much more than 50 years past, and it is the time of my parents youth and might explain how I came to be. But also it seems a distant time now, culturally foreign and remote to that which came shortly after, say, '66, which is about the time I became aware of the world. So it interests me.
Readers who, like me, have a disinterest in team sport might be grateful to know that details of the game are briefly confined to the opening chapter, where me meet our "hero", Arthur Machin, on the verge of losing eight of his front teeth in a dodgy scrummage before recounting his trials for a professional player's contract, and secondly in the final chapter, which takes place during a tiring match much closer to the end of his career. The rest is mostly about what was then, and probably still is, referred to as "kitchen sink" drama: a story of the ups and downs in relationships and life in general, mostly within a grim working class setting. Life, love and death, in a rut.
It is the story of a man whose good life doesn't quite work out for him. It's there for the taking but the world isn't overly concerned if he makes it or not. So he takes what he can but then moves through this life ambivalently, oscillating between violent ambition and lethargic despondency, wanting to do good and being a bit of a dick about it, falling flat and getting back up again, all for nothing, so it seems at the end.
I quite liked This Sporting Life as a novel. Even though nothing extraordinary happens throughout and there's not much of a conclusion, it wasn't longwinded, long-worded or overly long in length, and the thankfully small amount of detailed rugby is interesting. I'm wondering what I'll make of the film now - halfway through reading, I discovered a full-length copy on YouTube! Richard Harris stars as Frank Machin. Not Arthur then? Maybe a hint of the emerging "sixties".
Okay, so the reason this period interests me is because it's very recent history, not much more than 50 years past, and it is the time of my parents youth and might explain how I came to be. But also it seems a distant time now, culturally foreign and remote to that which came shortly after, say, '66, which is about the time I became aware of the world. So it interests me.
Readers who, like me, have a disinterest in team sport might be grateful to know that details of the game are briefly confined to the opening chapter, where me meet our "hero", Arthur Machin, on the verge of losing eight of his front teeth in a dodgy scrummage before recounting his trials for a professional player's contract, and secondly in the final chapter, which takes place during a tiring match much closer to the end of his career. The rest is mostly about what was then, and probably still is, referred to as "kitchen sink" drama: a story of the ups and downs in relationships and life in general, mostly within a grim working class setting. Life, love and death, in a rut.
It is the story of a man whose good life doesn't quite work out for him. It's there for the taking but the world isn't overly concerned if he makes it or not. So he takes what he can but then moves through this life ambivalently, oscillating between violent ambition and lethargic despondency, wanting to do good and being a bit of a dick about it, falling flat and getting back up again, all for nothing, so it seems at the end.
I quite liked This Sporting Life as a novel. Even though nothing extraordinary happens throughout and there's not much of a conclusion, it wasn't longwinded, long-worded or overly long in length, and the thankfully small amount of detailed rugby is interesting. I'm wondering what I'll make of the film now - halfway through reading, I discovered a full-length copy on YouTube! Richard Harris stars as Frank Machin. Not Arthur then? Maybe a hint of the emerging "sixties".
November 20, 2023
"I feel more and more that we must not judge of God from this world, it's just a study that didn't come off. " - Vincent van Gogh, 1888.
The rare novel without an angle. Arthur Machin is a young Rugby player in Northern England who works a dayjob in a factory. He forces himself into a relationship with the wrong woman, alienates his few friends and family and learns nothing but pain from years of being pummeled to pulp on the sodden turf, ending up in the same place where he started from. Things that are supposedly conventionally important (a career, starting a family) do not move him an inch, in fact he views them as a depressing waste of time. He struggles within himself, is violent and abusive on and off the field, and ultimately finds no resolution or growth, only the mirthless continuation of a life somehow persisting in spite of itself, each day following another like a boring curse.
Where the movie adaptation is straightforwardly about the grotesque class divide in England, Storey's novel suggests something more profound than social polemic, a sense of dissatisfaction not just with ones lot in life or the social structure but with the very fabric of life itself. This viewpoint is unremitting, cannot be eased by any alterable social conditions - it is an awareness of the worlds wrongness which seeps into every particle, into the weather, the light itself. It is an understanding as objective and undeniable as a lump of clay, and carrying just as little meaning. There is nothing to be extracted from it, it will never provide closure or answers. Culture, business, sociality, romantic relationships; all are only limp window dressings which despite themselves tend to draw our attention back to a fundamentally deficient reality.
The rare novel without an angle. Arthur Machin is a young Rugby player in Northern England who works a dayjob in a factory. He forces himself into a relationship with the wrong woman, alienates his few friends and family and learns nothing but pain from years of being pummeled to pulp on the sodden turf, ending up in the same place where he started from. Things that are supposedly conventionally important (a career, starting a family) do not move him an inch, in fact he views them as a depressing waste of time. He struggles within himself, is violent and abusive on and off the field, and ultimately finds no resolution or growth, only the mirthless continuation of a life somehow persisting in spite of itself, each day following another like a boring curse.
Where the movie adaptation is straightforwardly about the grotesque class divide in England, Storey's novel suggests something more profound than social polemic, a sense of dissatisfaction not just with ones lot in life or the social structure but with the very fabric of life itself. This viewpoint is unremitting, cannot be eased by any alterable social conditions - it is an awareness of the worlds wrongness which seeps into every particle, into the weather, the light itself. It is an understanding as objective and undeniable as a lump of clay, and carrying just as little meaning. There is nothing to be extracted from it, it will never provide closure or answers. Culture, business, sociality, romantic relationships; all are only limp window dressings which despite themselves tend to draw our attention back to a fundamentally deficient reality.
July 21, 2016
Oh the bleak lowering clouds and howling winds that blow through the British class structure. Rugby as a potential way out of a life spent down the mine or in this case as at the beckoning call of a lathe. Love unrequited because it cannot express itself clearly or even honestly because the players themselves only dimly perceive a way to proceed. Excellent evocation of working class life and this is the main focus of the novel filled with characters playing a rough game that has the players trapped economically and emotionally. Final chapter's description of a game is a superb example of sports writing. Highly recommended.
December 24, 2012
A book about Rugby League doesn't sound that promising.......however the writing is amazing, the descriptions of the games are gripping.......and really it's about being working class in the North in the 1950s. Unusually I thought the women characters were sympathetically and em pathetically portrayed. Haunting......definitely 5 stars!!
July 17, 2015
1 of those surprising gems - the brutal life of Professional rugby leaguers, ambitious and violent, seems an unlikely place for pathos, but Arthur Machin's love affair with his older widowed landlady is full of passion unable to be expressed, like a wild animal who wants to loved and be loved but instead can only try to possess and dominate and beat its prey into submission.
June 21, 2017
Read after coming across an obituary of David Storey. It's a brutish yet elegant read and the final chapter features probably the greatest descriptions of sporting action that is humanly possible to write. The narrative was (slightly) weak but the writing was brilliant and captures the plodding drudgery of Wakefield and towns like it perfectly.
March 19, 2011
Almost certainly the best of the kitchen sink novels of the 1960s with a rugby league setting. Although I would be pushed to name another book of the same ilk with such a setting. Sits alongside the best of the milieu, but, to my mind, rather peters out.
March 8, 2012
Traces a young man's career in Rugby, a brutal game. Do enjoy watching RU myself and support the Leicester Tigers. The book also describes Arthur's life within and outside the team, his relationships with friends, family and his landlady.
January 18, 2018
This story follows Arthur, a rugby player in northern England, as he moves into manhood, discovers love and dissatisfaction. I am never playing rugby--ouch.
April 7, 2018
I bought this in a secondhand bookshop remembering the film and wondering what the book would be like. Very glad I did. It is of it’s time but so well written and plotted. Would recommend
August 6, 2025
A book set firmly in the societies and an interesting insight into life then through the eyes of a rising rugby player. Interesting but felt it needed a little more - I was left feeling that I wanted more at the end.
September 27, 2020
igjen, eg føler fakultetet aktivt går inn for å få oss til å lese bøker eg ikkje liker
January 7, 2024
Storey number 3 for me and another great novel. Gritty realism combined with tender characterisation, I love his work. Published 1960.
July 14, 2025
This Sporting Life by David Storey is one of the ‘1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read’ https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
Nine out of 10
David Storey is the author of Saville, named ‘the best of the Booker winners’ and given that this reader has enjoyed This Sporting Life, the Booker Prize winner must be placed at least at number 1,001 on the list of novels that we must read, albeit it has come to sound somewhat jocular, for even for one has time on his hands – incidentally, positive psychology suggests (or is it a commandment) that we would be better off with time affluence than with the oligarch type of fortune, that should be ceased these days anyway, unless you park it in one of those mercantile, vile places that ignore the war and welcome riches, no matter what the blood cost…such as Dubai, turkey…boycott them and the rest, if you agree with this scrivener – reading the 1,000 must will be a challenge and the suggestion would be to finish some of the essentials, with an eye also on the thousands of pages they may have…
Arthur Machin is the hero of a narrative that The Guardian described like this ‘This Sporting Life has just reached its half-century and it remains the best novel written by a former sportsman or woman’ and we may have to change the ‘hero’ label…there was the hesitation, the thought of editing, deleting the word, but then his attraction resides in his ambivalence, he is both a big, powerful, brave man – president Zelensky appears to be the Number One across the world figure that we could, perhaps should use as standard now, on the Real Time show of the other day, the conclusion was reached that he is The Sexiest Man of 2022 and that competition is over, since women across the planet are seduced, awed by the defender of the Ukrainian freedom and independence, which gave place to some comments on the new image of male role models, woke activism and more – and at the same time a gorilla.
At the start of the saga, we find him wounded, he has been in a rugby game and due to the slowness of a team mate, he had been hit badly, front teeth are broken and he needs a dentist and false dentures, seeing as this is just before Christmas (a date is not given, as far as I can remember, but this would be post war Britain, in the fifties) they need to find a specialist on the same day and the industrialist that plays a key role in the committee patronizing the team, who is also owner of the factory where the hero works, Mister Weaver arranges for a dentist, who is rather reluctant to do his job, unless he is sure the five guineas he is asking for the removal of all the remains of the front teeth and the replacement is paid for
The story is told alternating between different time frames, the time of the injury during the game, the follow up, with the party at the Weaver house, where Arthur aka Art, also called Tarzan by one Josephine, is suffering for a while from the effects of the tranquilizer used at the dentist office, tries to find a place to rest, only to have to wait for a team mate that is ‘entreating’ a ‘sample’ – this is one word used for a girl, they were called birds and ‘bint’ in A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/a... which also deals with This Sporting Life, the habits of the lower class, uneducated men and women, as they were some seventy years ago, and many of them clearly still are today... just look at the way they vote and you get the picture…
As he is trying to rise up in society, at least for the time when he is a professional rugby player, for after that, a steep decline in living standard is to be expected, Art is moving in as a tenant of Mrs. Valerie Hammond, a widow with two children, Lynda and Ian, with whom he would have a very tumultuous, challenging, rather destructive, strange relationship, to begin with, he is happy with the low rent he is paying, she needs extra income, since her late husband, Eric, has died in an accident, which the rumors say that might have been a suicide, at the same Weaver works where the protagonist is employed…
Gradually, the tenant gets closer to the landlady and they have sex, only to use a term to describe this affair would be difficult and one reason why this novel is so rewarding and enjoyable is to follow the dynamic of their interactions, the clash of their personalities and eventually to live their lives – to quote Umberto Eco “The person who doesn’t read lives only one life…The reader lives 5,000…Reading is immortality backwards”- what they have is sex, but the man seems to be growing infatuated, some may even say in love with the woman – especially with hindsight, looking at the manner in which he tries to convince her that he needs to stay, then try to get back to her, when she is ill, staying with her at the hospital, willing to pay for her to get a private room and the thoughts, desires we find, the loyalty, faithfulness kept when as a football celebrity, he was admired by most of the girls in town – while Valerie is a more difficult question.
She is aware that she is older than her let-us-call-him-partner for the time being, and does not want to be disappointed, indeed, thrown into despair once she loses him, just like it had happened with her husband, and the fact that he drives them in his car, buys a fur coat and toys for the children, eventually gets a television set when prompted, looks like a way to ‘buy her’ and then there is the gossip of the neighbors, who see her as a slut and then as part of the ever more querulous dynamic, she is accusing Art of treating her as a whore, which is part of the main problem they have, that of miscommunication, misunderstanding – there is a good chance that she does know better, and he is confused and maladroit, gauche, a big bully, too concerned with himself, unable to express what he feels, and then unsure of what his emotions are, never mind sharing them with someone else – they will feel the impact of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as described by John Gottman in his quintessential The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/07/t... which is the best guide one can find…
John Gottman has an accuracy rate in his evaluations of over ninety percent and is able after a few minutes of interaction – presumably also using some Thin Slicing Effect, about which you find in another monumental psychology opus magnum, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/05/b... - to say which couples will stay together and those that will separate…Arthur and Valerie do not seem suitable for each other, due to Criticism, Defensiveness, Stonewalling and Contempt, which are the mentioned Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and it would be quite hard to envisage a world in which they would live together happily, forever after…
Nine out of 10
David Storey is the author of Saville, named ‘the best of the Booker winners’ and given that this reader has enjoyed This Sporting Life, the Booker Prize winner must be placed at least at number 1,001 on the list of novels that we must read, albeit it has come to sound somewhat jocular, for even for one has time on his hands – incidentally, positive psychology suggests (or is it a commandment) that we would be better off with time affluence than with the oligarch type of fortune, that should be ceased these days anyway, unless you park it in one of those mercantile, vile places that ignore the war and welcome riches, no matter what the blood cost…such as Dubai, turkey…boycott them and the rest, if you agree with this scrivener – reading the 1,000 must will be a challenge and the suggestion would be to finish some of the essentials, with an eye also on the thousands of pages they may have…
Arthur Machin is the hero of a narrative that The Guardian described like this ‘This Sporting Life has just reached its half-century and it remains the best novel written by a former sportsman or woman’ and we may have to change the ‘hero’ label…there was the hesitation, the thought of editing, deleting the word, but then his attraction resides in his ambivalence, he is both a big, powerful, brave man – president Zelensky appears to be the Number One across the world figure that we could, perhaps should use as standard now, on the Real Time show of the other day, the conclusion was reached that he is The Sexiest Man of 2022 and that competition is over, since women across the planet are seduced, awed by the defender of the Ukrainian freedom and independence, which gave place to some comments on the new image of male role models, woke activism and more – and at the same time a gorilla.
At the start of the saga, we find him wounded, he has been in a rugby game and due to the slowness of a team mate, he had been hit badly, front teeth are broken and he needs a dentist and false dentures, seeing as this is just before Christmas (a date is not given, as far as I can remember, but this would be post war Britain, in the fifties) they need to find a specialist on the same day and the industrialist that plays a key role in the committee patronizing the team, who is also owner of the factory where the hero works, Mister Weaver arranges for a dentist, who is rather reluctant to do his job, unless he is sure the five guineas he is asking for the removal of all the remains of the front teeth and the replacement is paid for
The story is told alternating between different time frames, the time of the injury during the game, the follow up, with the party at the Weaver house, where Arthur aka Art, also called Tarzan by one Josephine, is suffering for a while from the effects of the tranquilizer used at the dentist office, tries to find a place to rest, only to have to wait for a team mate that is ‘entreating’ a ‘sample’ – this is one word used for a girl, they were called birds and ‘bint’ in A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/a... which also deals with This Sporting Life, the habits of the lower class, uneducated men and women, as they were some seventy years ago, and many of them clearly still are today... just look at the way they vote and you get the picture…
As he is trying to rise up in society, at least for the time when he is a professional rugby player, for after that, a steep decline in living standard is to be expected, Art is moving in as a tenant of Mrs. Valerie Hammond, a widow with two children, Lynda and Ian, with whom he would have a very tumultuous, challenging, rather destructive, strange relationship, to begin with, he is happy with the low rent he is paying, she needs extra income, since her late husband, Eric, has died in an accident, which the rumors say that might have been a suicide, at the same Weaver works where the protagonist is employed…
Gradually, the tenant gets closer to the landlady and they have sex, only to use a term to describe this affair would be difficult and one reason why this novel is so rewarding and enjoyable is to follow the dynamic of their interactions, the clash of their personalities and eventually to live their lives – to quote Umberto Eco “The person who doesn’t read lives only one life…The reader lives 5,000…Reading is immortality backwards”- what they have is sex, but the man seems to be growing infatuated, some may even say in love with the woman – especially with hindsight, looking at the manner in which he tries to convince her that he needs to stay, then try to get back to her, when she is ill, staying with her at the hospital, willing to pay for her to get a private room and the thoughts, desires we find, the loyalty, faithfulness kept when as a football celebrity, he was admired by most of the girls in town – while Valerie is a more difficult question.
She is aware that she is older than her let-us-call-him-partner for the time being, and does not want to be disappointed, indeed, thrown into despair once she loses him, just like it had happened with her husband, and the fact that he drives them in his car, buys a fur coat and toys for the children, eventually gets a television set when prompted, looks like a way to ‘buy her’ and then there is the gossip of the neighbors, who see her as a slut and then as part of the ever more querulous dynamic, she is accusing Art of treating her as a whore, which is part of the main problem they have, that of miscommunication, misunderstanding – there is a good chance that she does know better, and he is confused and maladroit, gauche, a big bully, too concerned with himself, unable to express what he feels, and then unsure of what his emotions are, never mind sharing them with someone else – they will feel the impact of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as described by John Gottman in his quintessential The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/07/t... which is the best guide one can find…
John Gottman has an accuracy rate in his evaluations of over ninety percent and is able after a few minutes of interaction – presumably also using some Thin Slicing Effect, about which you find in another monumental psychology opus magnum, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/05/b... - to say which couples will stay together and those that will separate…Arthur and Valerie do not seem suitable for each other, due to Criticism, Defensiveness, Stonewalling and Contempt, which are the mentioned Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and it would be quite hard to envisage a world in which they would live together happily, forever after…
July 21, 2015
Written in 1960, this raw and powerful depiction of life in a northern industrial town has lost none of its impact and doesn’t feel at all dated. It follows the life of Arthur Machin as a Rugby League player in an often brutal environment of intrigue and ambition. With remarkable insight into working class life and manners, Storey has written a realistic and atmospheric portrayal of a grimy, depressing and often hopeless existence where sport offers a possible escape from the daily grind. His characters are not given to introspection and their actions speak louder than their emotions. Overall it’s a sobering and depressing picture but a wonderful example of kitchen sink realism that I found often moving and certainly unforgettable.
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