Biography
John Braine was born in Bingley, near Bradford, Yorkshire. He left St. Bede's Grammar School at 16 and worked in a shop, a laboratory and a factory before becoming, after the war, a librarian. Although he wrote twelve works of fiction, Braine is chiefly remembered today for his first novel, Room at the Top (1957), which was also turned into a successful film in 1959, with Laurence Harvey starring as Joe Lampton. In September 2012, BBC television finally broadcast a two-part dramatisation that had been delayed because of a dispute over copyright. Matthew McNulty was in the lead role
Following his literary success, John Braine moved to the south of England, living for a time in Woking. His 1968 novel, The Crying Game, is set in London and captures some of the atmosphere of the 'Swinging Sixties'. (It is not related to the 1992 film of the same name). Mildly left-wing in youth, he later moved (like his contemporaries Kingsley Amis and John Wain) to the political right, and supported America's involvement in Vietnam. He married Helen Wood and had four children. He died in 1986, aged 64.
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