Patrick Stewart in Joby (1975)

Sensitive studies of working-class grammar school boys growing up in the North of England used to be everywhere.

I read what must have been one of the last of them, Saville by David Storey (which won the Booker Prize in 1976), when I was in the sixth form.

Another work of that school was Joby by Stan Barstow, which was published in 1964.

Eleven years later it was filmed by Yorkshire Television in and around Horbury, the village near Wakefield where Barstow himself grew up. We lost a lot with the demise of the regional ITV companies.

Joby's chief interest today is that the young hero's father was played by Patrick Stewart. You can see him in the clip above.

And you can see Patrick Stewart as long ago as 1969 in another post on this blog.