Len Doherty (1930–1983) was a British miner, journalist and writer. He has been named as "among the most important practitioners of the socialist novel in Britain."Bounds, Philip. Orwell and Marxism: The Political and Cultural Thinking of George Orwell, London: I B Tauris, 2009
Born in Maryhill, Glasgow in 1930,Rogers, Byron. Me: The Authorised Biography, London: Aurum Press, 2009 Doherty moved with his family to Yorkshire, England in the 1940s and started work as a miner at the age of 17. In the mid-1950s while working at Thurcroft Colliery near Rotherham he became active in the local Communist Party and was one of a number of working class writers of the period sponsored by the Party and published by in-house company Lawrence and Wishart. His 1955 debut novel A Miner's Sons was the most successful of its type.Wilson, Nicola, Home in British Working-Class Fiction, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2015, p137
Second novel The Man Beneath appeared in 1957; Doherty left the Party the same yearSmith, David. Socialist Propaganda in the Twentieth Century British Novel, London: Macmillan, 1978, p185 and began work as a journalist for the Sheffield Star, later becoming chief leader writer. Third and final completed novel The Good Lion was published in 1958 and praised in The Spectator.
Doherty was the model for the character of 'Davie' in Clancy Sigal's semi-autobiographical 1960 novel Weekend in Dinlock,Engel, Matthew. Engel's England: Thirty-nine counties, one capital and one man, London:Profile Books, 2014 the pair becoming friends after having been introduced by Doris Lessing.Rubenstain, Roberta. Literary Half-Lives: Doris Lessing, Clancy Sigal, and Roman à Clef, London:Palgrave Macmillan, 2014 His writing was also an influence on Stan Barstow. According to Sid Chaplin, Doherty was part of a "Northern writers' mafia" brought together by media coverage of kitchen sink/angry young men literature of the period, including Chaplin, Barstow, John Braine and Keith Waterhouse."The Making of a Working-Class Writer – An Interview with Sid Chaplin", in The British Working-Class Novel in the Twentieth Century, Jeremy Hawthorn [Ed.], London: Edward Arnold, 1984
Doherty was named Provincial Journalist of the Year in 1969, which led to foreign assignments. In February 1970, he was one of several passengers injured in a terrorist attack by the PDFLP at Munich airport while on a return El Al flight from a trip to Israel, which affected his career and health.
Len Doherty committed suicide in 1983.
The Good Lion was republished in 2023.
Novels A Miner's Sons (Lawrence & Wishart, 1955) The Man Beneath (Lawrence & Wishart, 1957) The Good Lion (MacGibbon & Kee, 1958; 1889 Books, 2023)
References
Further reading https://communistpartyofgreatbritainhistory.wordpress.com/2021/07/02/len-doherty-1956/ http://stevek1889.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/sheffield-novels.html https://grahamstevenson.me.uk/2008/09/19/len-doherty/