Key to the Door is the story of a young man growing up in the grim backstreets of
Nottingham, England in the 1940s. He attempts to find a way of shaking off the stifling
working class expectations that are thrust upon him from all sectors of society. After leaving school for a soulless job in a cardboard factory and at 18 marries a girl who he has been in a relationship with for 3 years, and who he has made pregnant. He is finally called up for
National Service and sent to
Malaya during the
Emergency where he finds himself an unwilling combatant against Chinese
communists, whom he thinks of more as comrades in the
class struggle rather than as enemies. Based in part on the author's own experiences in Nottingham and in Malaya, the novel was unfavourably compared to the author’s previous stories of working class life in Nottingham,
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, but proved popular enough to be reprinted in 1978. ==Relation to other books==