'The Watchers and the Watched may be his best novel. This story is simple in outline, like most of the best stories, and it follows the initiation into manhood through marriage of a man who is thwarted by circumstances. He knows it but in the end sees a greater richness in ceasing to kick against it. The novel is embedded in a world of heavy machinery, of customs, of relationships and of language, much of which is now all but gone. In that sense it is as local in time as it is in place as it is on the tongue. But Sid Chaplin knew and was motivated by the truth that the local, explored well and fully, can aspire to the universal, and this is the aspiration which lifts and powers The Watchers and the Watched.' (From the foreword by Melvyn Bragg)
In a rapidly expanding city, blacksmith Tim 'Tiger' Mason leaves behind a cherished single life for the uncharted territory of marriage. Tiger's fierce independence leads him to resist the forces around him: his relationship with his new wife Jean simmers as new boundaries are established, while he and his childhood friends struggle to comprehend the changing fabric of Newcastle. Yet Tiger also allies himself with those he feels sympathy for, taking on a slum landlord and joining a young Asian immigrant to confront racism. As the city becomes more complicated and demanding, Tiger finds that personal relationships bring new discoveries. He and Jean forge trust and firm friendship in their physically charged marriage, and he grows closer to his dying father before learning for himself the unimagined joy of fatherhood.
'Here, as elsewhere in Chaplin's work, drifts the scent of a tremendous fugitive lyricism'
DJ Taylor, The Guardian
Chaplin's other novel set in Newcastle, The Day of the Sardine, has also been republished by Flambard. Both were reviewed enthusiastically by DJ Taylor in The Guardian.
The Watchers and the Watched costs £8.99 and was published in October 2004.
ISBN: 978-1-873226-73-5
Sid Chaplin was born on 20 September 1916 in Shildon, Co. Durham. In 1930 he commenced work in a bakery, but by 1931 was working at the Dean and Chapter Colliery in Ferryhill and became an apprentice to a colliery blacksmith in 1932.
In 1939 Sid won a scholarship to the Fircroft Working Men's College, Birmingham, but with the commencement of the Second World War, he returned to mining, working down the pit as a miner at the coal face. He married in 1941 to Irene Rutherford, living in Co. Durham until Sid was offered a post as feature writer on the National Coal Board's publication Coal, when they moved to Essex. In 1957 he was offered a new post as Public Relations Officer for the Coal Board, based in Newcastle upon Tyne where he lived until his death, having retired in 1972 to concentrate on his writing career. In 1975 he had a heart by-pass operation at Shotley Bridge Hospital, Co. Durham from which he recovered sufficiently to resume his writing and produced two more published volumes of short stories before his untimely death in January 1986.
Initially Sid Chaplin wrote between mining shifts and would often write through the night to create the perfect piece of writing. By May 1941 this had paid off with the publication of A Widow Wept in Penguin New Writing, edited by John Lehmann. More poems and stories were published in contemporary literary magazines, leading to a compilation of short stories, The Leaping Lad (1946), published by Phoenix House, which won the Atlantic Award in Literature in 1946. Novels, short stories and articles followed and he was a contributor to local and national newspapers and other publications throughout his life.
He received an Honorary Master of Arts from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1978, an Honorary Fellowship from Sunderland Polytechnic (now Sunderland University), 1977 and an OBE in 1977 for his services to the arts and especially for his work at Northern Arts.
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, Chaplin's social observation, humane characters, evocative writing style and authentic dialogue are as fresh and relevant today as when he was alive.
The text of D.T. Taylor's lecture on Writing from the margins: the English regional novel from Sid Chaplin to Julia Darling, which was given at Newcastle's Literary and Philosophical Society on 28th October 2004, is now on their website.
Largely based on information on the Newcastle University website and used with permission and thanks.
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