"A marvellous escape story. Throughout the book, Sillitoe is in a state of constant excitement and impatience for life to begin"
NEW STATESMAN & SOCIETY

"A modest, unassuming and decent book, best where it tells self-mockingly of Sillitoe's early literary efforts but chilling also in its brief account of his childhood."
ROBERT NYE, 'Scotsman Weekender'

"Few writers have come quite so far on such uncompromising fuel. An absorbing book, not only for its portrait of a pre-Welfare State slum childhood, but for its angle on the position of working class writers."
D J TAYLOR, 'Independent Weekend'

"Sillitoe's autobiography is the more impressive for being told in simple, almost biblical voice: the voice he was in search of all those years, trimmed to the essence and peculiarly his own."
OBSERVER

"A cheery story, something rare in any sort of biographical writing nowadays."
SUNDAY TIMES

"'Life Without Armour' is indeed an extraordinary book."
MAIL ON SUNDAY