Raw Material: Art in Response to the Alan Sillitoe Collection is a response to the author’s personal library collection bequeathed to Bromley House Library following Sillitoe’s death in 2010. Alan and his wife, the poet Ruth Fainlight, were joint library presidents from 2009-10. More recently Bromley House Library has received further donations of Alan’s work from the wider Sillitoe family.
Paul Harraway has volunteered at Bromley House over several years, helping to catalogue the collection containing books, maps, manuscripts and ephemera – offering a unique insight into the life, thoughts and working processes of this celebrated Nottingham author.
The artist’s initial response to the collection was to visit Nottingham locations described in Sillitoe’s colourful autobiography Life Without Armour. On discovering many of Sillitoe’s former haunts had been demolished or repurposed, Paul decided to focus on a single location described within Sillitoe’s 1959 short story The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, later realised in Tony Richardson’s 1962 film adaptation starring Tom Courteney.
The artist was attracted to a particular scene in the film featuring a prison near mature woodland, named as Ruxton Towers; a borstal for boys situated within an unnamed rural location. As luck would have it, this fictitious location mirrored HMP Lowdham Grange, once a borstal for boys, from Ploughman Wood, part of the original Sherwood Forest, located near the artist’s home in the Nottinghamshire village of Lambley.
Over a series of forty monotone and colour drawings, paintings and prints, the artist depicts a view of a prison wall within woodland, firstly in the depths of winter and then in the following spring. Sillitoe’s father spent time in prison, and these pieces explore questions of freedom and imprisonment which resonate with the artist’s own family history.
Throughout September people can book on artist led tours of the work or attend two Q&A and in conversation events where Paul and guest curators will discuss the work, the collection and the artistic response. These are all available to book directly online at www.bromleyhouse.org/events
Posted on 11 August 2026
