If Warnley is Bradford, what is Dufton?

I watched the film again this week. It's one of my favorites. I was born a working-class Londoner in 1950 and can relate to it a lot. I agree that it is an excellent movie but perhaps one that younger people can't relate to.

I've always noticed the time-lag you mention. I suppose you just have to go with it but I do wonder what the makers of the film were thinking.

I always liked LH as an actor very much and don't understand why the critics so disliked him. Even on the DVD, the biography mentions he worked as a male prostitute while getting started as an actor. Is that really necessary? Do I care? No, I don't. But I do believe he was a better actor than is generally thought. I have Manchurian Candidate DVD too. He gave a great performance.

in response to margot, no its not bradford but was filmed in halifax close though my mother was an extra in the film , she worked at the factory joe lampton was seen outside . regards

Bradford is the site of most of the location work - including the "Dufton" scene where the temporarily returning Lampton flicks his cigarette into a puddle in the factory yard. During the sixties I attended grammar school in the city (John Braine had been a pupil at the same school some years earlier) and can identify where many scenes were shot.

In Braine's novel, Warnley is probably based on Bingley some five miles to the west (and upwind!) of Bradford.I believe the author worked in the library there for a short period. Bingley did have textile mills, but sheltered by the southern slopes of Ilkley Moor, had "leafy" areas too and would have been regarded as socially aspirational at the time.

Dufton is more problematic but I would suggest was based on towns such as Batley or Dewsbury that specialised in the production of "shoddy" ie recycled wool. This would be mixed with pure wool fibres and dyed before weaving - which would explain Alderman Brown's trading links with the town. Although shoddy woollens were highly profitable there was a definite pecking order in the wool towns of the old West Riding, and places such as Bingley whose business was in worsteds would be far nearer the top. An alternative "Dufton" might be found in any one of the steel and engineering towns of South Yorkshire that for obvious reasons received far more attention from the Luftwaffe during the Second World War.

Ruthlessly exploitative behaviour is laid bare in both book and film - ironic really since Braine was very much a man of the political right. Since the eighties it has almost come to be seen as a good. A remake of this excellent film is long overdue!

Margot
Seven years after you asked the question, this article from 2006, based on an interview with his wife may give you the answer.

"Braine was born in a small terraced house off Bradford's Westgate in 1922, and moved to Thackley when his father got a job at Esholt Sewage Works. Thackley was a grim satellite of industrial Shipley, just the sort of place his main Room at the Top character Joe Lampton came from, "where the snow seemed to turn

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/around-yorkshire/local-stories/john-braine-s-fall-from-the-top-1-2397027