An English author, playwright, screenwriter and amateur footballer. His novels and screenplays explore the political and economic struggles of working-class Northern England, particularly in his native West Riding/South Yorkshire.

He is best known for the novel A Kestrel for a Knave (1968), which he helped adapt for Ken Loach's film Kes (1969). He collaborated with Loach on adaptations of his novels Looks and Smiles and The Gamekeeper, and the 1977 two-part television drama The Price of Coal.

He also wrote the television film Threads, which depicts the impact of a nuclear war on Sheffield.