Love on the Dole

 In Hanky Park, near Salford, Harry and Sally Hardcastle grow up in a society preoccupied with grinding poverty, exploited by bookies and pawnbrokers, bullied by petty officials and living in constant fear of the dole queue and the Means Test. His love affair with a local girl ends in a shotgun marriage, and, disowned by his family, Harry is tempted by crime. Sally, meanwhile, falls in love with Larry Meath, a self-educated Marxist. But Larry is a sick man and there are other more powerful rivals for her affection.

Review: Being conceived in suffering and written in blood, it profoundly moves its audience. * The Times *

Not for nothing did Edith Sitwell claim that she could not recall being "so deeply, so terribly moved" as when reading this story.

An evocative portrayal of life in depression-era Britain.

* The Guardian *

One of the earliest and best novels to call for social change in Britain * Dazed Digital *