Radio 4 Book at Bedtime - 50th Anniversary edition.

This book is also available as an ebook: buy it from Amazon here.

Sid Chaplin’s classic novel of disaffection in 1960s Newcastle, The Day of the Sardine, charts a young man’s uneasy passage into adulthood.

Harsh and occasionally comic, Arthur Haggerston’s story takes place against the background of a young workforce absorbed into tedious, repressive employment where the only outlets come through street violence and gang warfare. Although set in an environment in some ways lost to the past, the essence of Sid Chaplin’s novel is easily recognisable amid the urban tensions of Britain today.

“This is a welcome return to print for the early 60s chronicle of Geordie man-child Arthur Haggerston as he negotiates the void between a failed education system and a stagnant labour market.”
The Guardian

“Chaplin’s prose is wonderfully alive, and his novel is itself an overlooked but untarnished gem.”
The Independent

Sid Chaplin (1916–86) influenced a generation of writers including David Storey, Stan Barstow and Keith Waterhouse, and his novels and stories enjoyed a popular readership in the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on his working-class upbringing and employment in the North-East of England, his powers of social observation, humane characters, evocative writing style and authentic dialogue are as fresh and relevant today as when he was alive.