Sid Chaplin OBE (20 September 1916 – 11 January 1986) was an English writer whose works (novels, television screenplays, poetry and short stories) are mostly set in the north-east of England, in the 1940s and 1950s.
[4] He later wrote for The Guardian, including theatre reviews, essays of social observation and, from 1963, his own column Northern Accent.
[5] Chaplin's literary career pre-dated the so-called angry young men genre and has been credited as an influence on the late 1950s – early 1960s "kitchen sink" social realism of writers such as Alan Sillitoe and Stan Barstow.
[citation needed] His novels The Day of the Sardine (1961) and The Watchers and the Watched (1962) have been cited as classics of "working class existentialism"[6] and were reprinted by Flambard Press in 2004.
[7] In 1968, playwright Alan Plater based his play and musical production Close The Coalhouse Door on Chaplin's early writings, set to songs by Alex Glasgow.