David Storey, acclaimed writer of plays, novels . By Benedict
Nightingale New York Times . LONDON - David Storey, a British writer
who drew on his experiences as a miner's son, a farmworker, an art
student, a professional rugby player, and a teacher to create novels
and plays that won acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, died here on
Sunday. He was 83. A niece, Samantha Storey, said the cause was
Parkinson's disease and related dementia. Though David Storey struggled
for recognition at first, he would win Britain's premier fiction award,
the Man Booker Prize, in 1976 for his novel "Saville," in which a
miner's son breaks away from his background. Two of his novels were
shortlisted for the award. It was as a playwright that Mr. Storey was
probably best known; his plays have been performed in some 60
countries. Three of his works were named best play by the New York
Drama Critics' Circle, all within four years in the 1970s. He also
earned two Tony nominations. Yet it was as a novelist that he first
gained notice, with "This Sporting Life," published in 1960, which won
the Somerset Maugham Fiction Award. A vividly told tale of a maverick
miner turned rugby player, the novel was adapted for film in 1963, with
a screenplay by Mr. Storey, and won Oscar nominations for its lead
actors, Richard Harris and Rachel Roberts. "This Sporting Life" was
followed by two more novels notable for their bold characterization and
narrative energy: "The Flight Into Camden," narrated by a miner's
daughter who falls for a married teacher, and "Radcliffe," about two
unlikely childhood friends - one moody and intelligent, the other
physically powerful - whose relationship takes a homosexual turn when
they meet again as young men. "Radcliffe" was shortlisted for the
Booker prize, as was Mr. Storey's novel "Pasmore," published in 1973,
centered on a university lecturer whose comfortable life unravels. By
1966, Mr. Storey was established enough for the Traverse Theater in
Edinburgh to stage his play "The Restoration of Arnold Middleton,"
which he had written in a single weekend six years earlier, at a time
when he was despairing of his novel-writing career. The tale of a
troubled schoolteacher, it transferred to London, where Mr. Storey, who
had seldom gone to the theater, found himself acclaimed as a dramatist.
"The sheer exhilaration of seeing it come alive onstage prompted me to
write another five plays in no time at all," he said. Two he threw out,
but the others were staged in 1969 and 1970 at the Royal Court Theater
in London. The three plays - all directed by Lindsay Anderson, with
whom Mr. Storey developed what he called "an almost mystical
relationship" - were "In Celebration," about the turbulent reunion of a
miner's family scarred by the death of a son; "The Contractor," in
which wrangling workmen were seen first raising and then lowering a
tent for a wedding reception; and "Home," in which John Gielgud and
Ralph Richardson portrayed elderly men precariously surviving in a
mental institution. Mr. Storey said he had written "Home" in three
days. The play's deft characterizations and understated dialogue led
some critics to compare it to Chekhov, and after it transferred to
Broadway, in 1970, it drew Tony nominations for Mr. Storey, Gielgud,
Richardson, Anderson, and the actress Mona Washbourne. "Home" was
different from most of Mr. Storey's best-known work in that it was not
derived from his own experience, as "The Contractor" and "The Farm"
were, both from 1973 and both drawing on his days as a laborer in his
youth. Similarly, "The Changing Room" (also 1973) was based on his
rugby days, and "Life Class" (1974) drew on his time at the Slade
School of Fine Art in London. "The Changing Room" won a Tony nomination
and that play, "Home," and "The Contractor" were all named best play by
the New York Drama Critics' Circle. They and others continue to be
revived. Reviewing an off-Broadway revival of "Home" in 2006, Neil
Genzlinger of The New York Times described it as "achingly beautiful.
In Mr. Storey's stage world, characters were misfits, at odds with
their roots, their environment, their work, their relationships, their
inner selves. "All my plays ask for a more whole, grander view of
life," he once said. "But there's always sadness at their endings. The
youngest of four sons, David Malcolm Storey was born on July 13, 1933,
in public housing in the Yorkshire town of Wakefield. Thanks to his
father's determination that David not follow him into the coal mines,
he was educated at a prestigious local grammar school and, it seemed,
was destined to become a teacher. But he appalled his parents by
deciding that a safe, secure profession was not for him. He attended
the local art school rather than a university, and then won a place at
Slade. A career as a painter seemed likely. But to pay for art school,
Mr. Storey, an athletic 18-year-old, signed a contract with the Leeds
Rugby League club, which meant commuting between Yorkshire, where
fellow players disdained him as "this artist swanning in for matches,"
he said, and London, where fellow students thought him "a bit of an
oaf. He was, he added, at home only on the train, and he used the
journeys to write novels, if unsuccessfully at first. He had to wait
until he was 26, married and working in assorted London schools as a
teacher, before "This Sporting Life," his seventh novel, found a
publisher. Though Mr. Storey's plays often reflected Britain's class
tensions, they resonated with audiences around the world and with
people of all classes. Mr. Storey remembered Princess Margaret's coming
backstage after a performance of "In Celebration," a tale of emotional
ferment in mining country, telling him that she had left behind a
friend sitting alone and weeping. As the princess told it, an usher had
asked the friend if the play had upset her. "It's just like the royal
family," she sobbed. As attested to by the three plays of his that were
all produced in 1973, Mr. Storey would work simultaneously on several
manuscripts of plays or novels, walking between them like a painter
moving from easel to easel in a second-floor room in his house in the
Camden district of London. His hope, he said, was that they would
"develop their own organic life. Many remained unfinished, he said,
after he decided that they were "dreadful, turgid illustrations of some
wonderful theme. And in recent years many of his finished novels failed
to find a publisher or were unenthusiastically received. The same was
true of his plays. Though he had his angry moments - he famously hit
the critic Michael Billington in 1976 over a bad review - Mr. Storey
was usually a mild, modest man who lived quietly in London with his
wife, Barbara, whom he married in 1956. She died in 2015. He is
survived by two daughters, Helen, a professor of fashion science at the
University of Arts/London College of Fashion, and Kate , a biologist;
two sons, Jake, a finance director, and Sean, who works in aerospace
defense strategy; a brother, Anthony; and six grandchildren.
