Blog Posts

Walter Greenwood is well-known for his novel Love on the Dole (1933), which is remembered as the iconic British novel of the Depression. By 1940 it had sold some 46, 290 copies in the UK, and had been seen in a stage adaptation by some 3 million people in Britain. Love on the Dole was… Continue reading The Cleft Stick (1937) by Walter Greenwood and Arthur Wragg

  Much of Walter Greenwood’s other fiction refers back to his first novel, Love on the Dole (1933), and so it should be helpful to start with a review for his first novel too, though it is his most famous.  Love on the Dole established Greenwood’s reputation, was influential at the time and  later, and… Continue reading Walter Greenwood, Love on the Dole (1933)

Book review by Chris Hopkins. Keen as I am on Greenwood’s fiction, I think that  his highly novelistic memoir There Was a Time is one of his best pieces of writing, and perhaps the best in some ways. It was his last published prose work and was written after more than thirty years experience of being… Continue reading There Was a Time (1967)

Walter Greenwood is best remembered for Love on the Dole (1933), but he went on writing until the nineteen sixties and remained a popular author. I recently read his last novel and thought it reflected interestingly on his thoughts about later working-class life (depicted in leisure-mode on the dust-wrapper by Douglas Hall in a style… Continue reading Saturday Night at the Crown (1959) by Walter Greenwood

(This review is longer than usual - it seemed best to review the whole trilogy in one). Between 1952 and 1956 Greenwood completed his Trelooe Trilogy (published by Hutchinson – all references are to these first editions). The trilogy was set in Cornwall, where Greenwood had holidayed since meeting the artist Arthur Wragg in the… Continue reading The Trelooe Trilogy by Walter Greenwood [So Brief the Spring (1952), What Everybody Wants (1954) and Down by the Sea (1956)].