Four decades on from the novel which was at the forefront of the new wave of British literature, we rediscover the Seaton brothers: older, certainly; wiser – possibly not.

Arthur and Brian Seaton, one with an ailing wife, one with an emotional knapsack of failure and success, are on their way to Jenny’s seventieth birthday party. Jenny and Brian had years ago experimented with sex – semi-clothed, stealthy, with the bonus of fear. Arthur, of course, had cut a winning swathe through the married and unmarried women of Nottinghamshire.

Life has changed. But there is still pleasure; and still pain.

Alan Sillitoe is undoubtedly one of the greatest English writers of our time, and, indeed, one of the most influential.