Sillitoe Trail Xtra

Map of Nottingham.

The Sillitoe Trail : Xtra

From an early age, geography and maps were an important part of Alan Sillitoe’s life. In the 1974 essay Maps, the author remembers watching with “utter fascination when the teacher in school took a wheeled metal cylinder with a handle to it, rolled it on an inked pad, and then pushed it firmly across a blank page in my exercise book so that a perfect outline of Europe and North America was left gleaming on the page. – It was the action of a magic wand, a device made by a wizard.”

When writing his Nottingham-based novels, Sillitoe always had a street plan to hand, alongside a one-inch scaled map of the area, enabling him to produce a definitive Nottingham landscape. From this position he was able to ‘map the spiritual turmoil of myself and other people.’

Although rooted in the places and spaces of Nottingham, the themes expressed in the original Sillitoe Trail project are boundless and relatable: Every village, town or city has it’s own civic spaces, places of work, leisure space, solitary space and carnival space. The themes of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning are timeless too and Sillitoe’s ‘spiritual turmoil’ is present today and extends into the future. We hope that you enjoy these new features.

Paul Fillingham

Explore Sillitoe Trail Xtra

Pixels on Parade – Then and Now

The Sillitoe Trail Factory Handbook was designed to accompany the literary festival and mobile app launch held at Nottingham Contemporary.

The Sillitoe Trail

Take your own interactive tour of the author’s city and follow in Arthur Seaton’s footsteps around Nottingham, exploring the real locations of key scenes from the novel. You can go back to the Old Market Square or visit The White Horse pub, the Raleigh factory, the River Trent and Goose Fair. For updated content, visit Sillitoe Trail Xtra

Follow: Arthur Seaton @Thespacelathe on Twitter

Download: Sillitoe Trail Factory Handbook (17MB PDF)