Angry Young Men is a journalistic catchphrase applied to a number of British playwrights and novelists from the mid-1950s. Their political views were seen as radical, sometimes even anarchic, and they described social alienation of different kinds. On television, their writings were often expressed in plays in anthology drama series such as Armchair Theatre (ITV, 1956-68) and The Wednesday Play (BBC, 1964-70); this leads to a confusion with the kitchen sink drama category of the early 1960s

The group was considered to include Kingsley Amis, John Osborne, Alan Sillitoe, John Braine, and Colin Wilson; also sometimes Stuart Holroyd, Bill Hopkins, Philip Larkin and John Wain. That made the classification incoherent enough — a generation of young provincial writers, of varied talent and experience, mixed in with some Oxbridge malcontents. The early model AYM was William Cooper (who was both Cambridge-educated and a 'provincial' writer in his frankness and material) and his 1950 Scenes from Provincial Life.

Reference

• The Angry Young Men: A Literary Comedy of the 1950s (2002) by Humphrey Carpenter

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