Besides Alfie, Naughton was also known for plays such as Spring and Portwine. Born in Ireland in County Mayo in 1910, his family moved to Bolton, Lancashire when he was four. In On the Pig's Back (1987), the first book in his autobiographical trilogy, he described his childhood in Bolton during the Great War, and his attempts at writing when he worked as a lorry driver. After years of struggle, he had by 1945 published a number of stories, and his first novel, A Roof Over Your Head, was hailed by The Times as "One of the most moving accounts of what life was like under the shadow of the dole queue in the north of England". John Betejeman thought it was a "work of genius". The first two volumes of his autobiography were published by Oxford University Press. Bill Naughton died in 1992 after completing this last part of his autobiography.