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Sid Chaplin 
(1916-1986) 
 
Sid Chaplin was born in 1916 in the north of England into a 
miner’s family. Having graduated from school when he was 
sixteen, he began working at the coal mines. Only by the end of the 
thirties Chaplin managed to renew his studies at the workers’ 
college. Although his books began to appear in the late forties, 
writing never became his sole profession. Then Sid Chaplin was 
working in the administration of the coal mines in Newcastle and 
at the same time was writing novels and articles for newspapers 
and magazines. Chaplin did not win popularity with his first book. 
His first publication was a series of short stories entitled “The 
Leaping Lad” published in 1948. It was followed by three novels: “My Fate Cries Out” (1950), 
“The Thin Seam” (1951) and “The Big Room” (1960). Widely read and highly appreciated by 
critics was Chaplin’s novel “The Day of the Sardine” which appeared in 1961. The novel “The 
Watchers and the Watched”, published a year later, was an equal success. The latest of the writer’s 
novels is “Sam in the Morning” (1965). As a writer, Sid Chaplin belonged to the so-called 

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“working class literature” trend in English literature. This trend included, besides Chaplin himself, 
Alan Sillitoe, Raymond Williams, Stan Barstow, David Storey and others. The essential subject of 
Chaplin’s books is the life of the working class youth. The writer deals mainly with the present and 
the future of the younger generation of the English people. A teenager is always present in his 
characters.
Arthur Haggerston, the hero of “The Day of the Sardine”, is faced with the problem: which 
way of life to choose? The usual, everyday life with its bourgeois standards and attributes threatens 
to make “a sardine” of him. The image of a “sardine” is for Chaplin the symbol of a human being 
absolutely submissive to the power of circumstances. Arthur does not want to become a sardine and 
chooses an ordinary profession of “the white collar” type. On the other hand, Arthur’s protest has 
no clear direction; like thousands of other teenagers, he is angry at society as such. Becoming 
involved in a youth gang, the hero is always in danger of committing some crime. At the end of the 
novel Arthur is helped to get rid of the gang’s influence by his grown-up friend Harry Parker, but 
the old problem of choosing a way of life is never solved. Tim Mason, the main character in “The 
Watchers and the Watched”, finds himself in a similar situation. He is older than Arthur and is 
married, but his wife, with her conformist views, belongs to the world of “the watchers”, the prison-
guards of society, while Tim himself is one of “the watched” imprisoned within it. As Arthur 
Haggerston, Tim Mason protests against the routine of “sardine-like” existence. A possible solution 
is prompted by his father, an elderly worker, who reminds Tim of the working class movement in 
the twenties and thus points out to him the way to live and struggle.