Stan Barstow was reluctant to dwell on himself, but eventually the Yorkshire author agreed to write a kind of autobiography, reports JOHN WHEATCROFT

STAN Barstow has always taken the view that writing an autobiography is something of an 'ego trip'. After 11 novels and three short-story collections he has finally capitulated, although even then he admits that he had to be leaned on by another writer. The book is dedicated to Brian Thompson 'who twisted my arm'.

Barstow, who was at Borders in York last week to publicise In My Own Good Time, says: "Leaving aside my childhood in the 1930s, the events that brought me to the attention of readers are fast receding. You would certainly need to be in your mid-fifties to have known about them first hand."

The time he speaks of is the early 1960s when, together with the likes of Keith Waterhouse and David Storey, Barstow, the son of a Yorkshire coal miner, emerged as a new voice in English fiction: northern, urban and working class. The timing was good.

"There was much greater mobility in society at that time than there had been. You didn't just stick in your own level and follow your father into the factory or down the pit. There were ways of getting out, possibilities out there. I suppose you could say it created a feeling of independence, the feeling that you could say something," he says.

He said plenty with A Kind Of Loving, the story of a man's physical infatuation with a woman he does not love. Previously, he had sold four short stories in eight years and earned £77 18s 6d. His first published novel's success - the film followed quickly - enabled him to give up his job in the sales department of an engineering firm. He could now make his living entirely from writing but he acknowledges that his life could have taken a very different path.

Although a bright grammar school lad, his school years in Ossett were wasted. "I resisted being taught. I lost opportunities all over the place," he says. His wife, Connie, suggested that he might have a writing talent and, totally dedicated to something for the first time, he worked assiduously at his craft.

This dedication and stubbornness is reflected in the book's title. "I'll get to that in my own good time, not in yours or anybody else's. I've also had a very good time because it's worked out and it's been very satisfying."

In the mid 1970s, Barstow became a highly acclaimed television screenwriter with his adaptations of two of his own novels and Winifred Holtby's South Riding. Then, a sobering reflection on the uncertainties of a writer's life, there were suddenly no new commissions on the table. It was back to the search for inspiration for a new novel.

He offers some useful insights for anyone interested in the creative process, especially those who think they might have a spark of imagination.

"I thought there were things I could say about the rather complex act of writing, about how I approach it because it can be a mystery to people who don't do it. It is also sometimes a mystery to people who want to do it, who may come at it for the wrong reasons or who may need sorting out and encouraging."

A Kind Of Loving, still fresh and earthy, remains his best known work and is perhaps the most enduring. But, like many writers, he is reluctant to single out one novel and is quite proud of his trilogy from the late 1980s set during the Second World War: Just You Wait And See, Give Us This Day and Next Of Kin. "It seemed to me a deepening and enriching of what I had previously done, where I had started from."

Writers rarely retire - though Shakespeare was a notable exception. After a career spent entirely in Yorkshire, Barstow now lives with a new partner in South Wales. He's still making notes and may yet go into print again.

But whether he does or not, In My Own Good Time offers a fascinating, rounded picture of a writer's life.

He considers himself lucky. The publishing game is one in which, he admits, there is no justice. "Some better writers than I have known little material reward. Some much worse have become enviably rich.

"People have told me they have switched on the radio and known within two minutes that the work they were hearing was mine. I think I have got a voice that is not quite like anybody else's, which gives my work an individual flavour, and I think that is the most you can aspire to."

In My Own Time is published by Smith Settle (paperback £11.95, hardback £16.95)