Book Club: Len Doherty’s 1965 Sheffield classic, The Good Lion, 65 years later

The publisher claims it to be a far more accomplished piece of writing than Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and a better study of coming-of-age masculinity and emotional conflict than This Sporting Life. And yet it has been forgotten.

The novel follows the story of Walt Morris, setting out on a life of his own, with his looking-after-number-one outlook on life: he is a “good lion” – a lion that kills a deer not being a “bad lion.”

Set against the backdrop of post-war Sheffield (although the city is never named), Walt tries to work out for himself the problems of living in the age of the hydrogen bomb, the cold war and satellites, and comes to realise that his good lion philosophy has flaws as life and relationships mould him into an adult.

Len Doherty was a Glaswegian who left school at 14, ended up at Sheffield’s Nunnery Colliery as a “Bevin boy” and later fitted his writing in between shifts at the coalface at Thurcroft and life in a house with four young children: writing in three-thousand-word bursts, apparently sometimes going without sleep.

His writing got him noticed and landed him a job as a journalist on The Sheffield Star, where he went on to write the lead column, Vulcan, and won the title of Provincial Journalist of the Year for 1968.

Unusually for a regional paper, he was given foreign assignments, and it was on a return trip from Israel in 1970 that Doherty’s fate took a further twist — he was on a transit bus at Munich airport with El-Al passengers when a grenade was rolled into the bus by terrorists.

Already a troubled soul, it is believed that these events further injured Doherty psychologically as well as physically.

It is said he blamed himself for people’s injuries in his failed attempt to kick the grenade away. On July 22, 1983 he was found hanging in his garage at his home in Hurlfield.

This marks the 40th anniversary of Len Doherty’s death at his own hand and you can buy this special edition from the publisher, 1889 books, on their website.

[Extract]:

He had already formed his own picture of his new landlady: since she was a widow and old, she would be a frail little thing with white hair, and he would have to shout to her, probably. As the door opened he faced a brawny-armed woman as tall as himself and much broader, stout and shapeless in a green overall which hung to her thick ankles. Her head was too small for her big body and the incongruous effect of this was increased by the way her white hair was drawn tightly back in a thin bun on her thick red neck.

‘Mrs. Stevens you want?’ The voice was unsuited to the massive, sagging chest; it was high, off-pitch and harsh. In a face like that of a walnut figurine, with the wrinkles of nearly seventy years scored from her shiny high forehead to her heavy jaw, her small eyes looked like set opals.

‘Yes… My name’s Morris and I—’

‘You’ve found us, then. Good. Thought you’d got lost.’

As he lowered a case she turned away, and he offered his hand too late. He was standing looking at it and beginning to blush when she called from inside: ‘Come along in, then.’

There was no hallway, the stairs facing the front door and the room to his right. He put down the cases and went into the room, with a gawkish feeling warning him that this was a time when he was likely to do everything wrong and blush at each mistake; acutely conscious of every move and every word.

‘In here; that’s right.’ She was waiting before a large old-fashioned kitchen fireplace with a large old-fashioned easy chair on either side. Walt thought that everything in the crammed room looked old-fashioned until he saw the youth sitting by the table in a high-backed knobby-legged chair. He was small and plump with a round friendly face and wide smile. His brown hair was brushed to one side but had a tendency to spring forward and flop over his eyes when he moved his head so that he was constantly half raising a smooth, plump arm and a hand as small and neat as a girl’s ready to push it back. Mrs. Stevens introduced him as Bill Spenser and asked Walt his first name.

‘Walt.’ He stood by the table, unbuttoning his coat and wondering how you moved about in here.

Apart from the easy chairs and oak table, there was a long sofa with wooden legs and back, a huge glass-fronted cabinet full of plate and ornaments, four straight-backed chairs and several statuettes.

On the wall behind Bill hung ‘A Stag at Bay.’

‘Walter Morris, Bill.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Walter,’ Bill said, bouncing out of the chair and pushing out a hand.

‘Walt,’ he said firmly, stiffly jerking Bill’s soft hand a few times. ‘Like yours is Bill.’

‘Okay, Walt. Pleased to know you, anyway. His smile widened, and Walt, whose two front teeth had been knocked out when he was sixteen and replaced by screwed-in false ones, envied the neatness and whiteness of Bill’s.

‘Sit down, then, Walter,’ the old lady said. ‘Bill can take your cases up while I mash tea.’

He shrugged off his raincoat and sat in the nearest easy chair, which sighed and took him lower than he had expected. The old lady went into the kitchen while he was struggling up from this enfolded depth and Bill went to the stairs. There was something faulty in the way he walked which, although not a pronounced limp, jarred on Walt’s acute sense of physical correctness. He looked around him, at the two paintings, the pictures of wedding groups and the embroidered mottoes on the walls, and sighed. He leaned back, but a sensation of helplessness as his body sank deeper and deeper brought him upright again.

Bet she’s got an aspidistra somewhere, he thought. At least it was clean. Glass and metal and linoleum all shone; the chair covers were bright and the steel grate sparkled back the fire’s ruddy reflection. On top of the cabinet was an interesting statue of a nude bronze female with pointed breasts, extravagantly posturing beside a rearing bronze horse. He liked that one better than the china Alsatian who crouched on the old radio, or the little Dutch boy holding his girl’s hand on the window-sill.

Over strong sweet tea and thick slices of fruit cake they chatted about his journey. He began to relax and feel he was performing with fair dignity after all until the old lady leaned forward and said it was time they sorted things out. Walt felt defensive, bogged down with a teacup in his hands and his knees almost as high as his chin, as she towered over him with her big mottled hands set firmly on her green-tented knees. He noticed Bill smiling as he leaned back in his own chair and lit a cigarette.

‘You’ll be goin’ to t’ Labour Exchange in t’ morning?’ she began. He assured her he would, put the cup and saucer down and fumbled in his pockets, turning out ration books, identity card and thin wallet before he found the proper forms.

‘I’ll be starting work Wednesday, I expect,’ he said, feeling obliged to prove his good intentions. She picked up the ration books but ignored the other forms.