# Bernard Kops

Bernard Kops (28 November 1926 – 25 February 2024) was a British dramatist, memoirist, poet and novelist.

## Early life

Born in 1926 and raised in Stepney Green in London's East End, the son of Dutch-Jewish immigrants, Bernard Kops was present at the Battle of Cable Street in October 1936. He was evacuated from London in 1939, and recounted that experience in episode two of Thames Television's TV series, The World at War, first broadcast in 1973.

## Career

His first play, The Hamlet of Stepney Green, was produced at the Oxford Playhouse in 1957. It is considered to be one of the keystones of the "New Wave" in British 'kitchen sink' drama. First novel, Awake For Mourning (1958), followed the next year and has been appraised by critic Stewart Home as "ahead of its time". Ken Worpole has described Kops' first volume of autobiography, The World Is A Wedding (1963), as "one of the most important post-war English autobiographies".
His subsequent plays include Enter Solly Gold (1962), Ezra (1981, about Ezra Pound), Playing Sinatra (1991) and The Dreams of Anne Frank (1992, about Anne Frank). He also wrote extensively for radio and television. His radio play Monster Man (1999) is about the creator of "King Kong", Willis O'Brien.
In 1971-2, Kops wrote two series of sitcom Alexander the Greatest for ATV.
Kops wrote the television movie script Just One Kid for director/producer John Goldschmidt; the film was broadcast on the ITV Network in 1974, and won a Silver Hugo Award at the Chicago Film Festival. Kops then wrote the television film It's a Lovely Day Tomorrow (1975), about the Bethnal Green tube disaster of 1943, also for John Goldschmidt, and this was nominated for an International Emmy Award for Drama Series.
In addition to plays, novels and autobiography, he published volumes of poetry, and also wrote travelogues, including a series of articles about a trip to the United States (1999) and another about a journey to China (2000), both written for The Guardian.

## Personal life and death

In 1956 Kops married Erica Eve Gordon; they had four children. The couple were the models for characters Mannie and Miriam Katz in Colin MacInnes' novel Absolute Beginners (1959).
In 1975, suffering from drug addiction, Kops made a suicide attempt; he wrote about the incident and his successful journey to sobriety in his second autobiography, Shalom Bomb: Scenes from My Life.
In 2009, Kops was awarded a civil list pension in recognition for services to literature.
In 2016 filmmaker Jill Campbell directed a documentary on Bernard Kops, The Hamlet of Canfield Gardens, referencing his first play and longstanding West Hampstead address.
Kops died on 25 February 2024, at the age of 97.

## Selected bibliography
### Novels

* Awake for Mourning (MacGibbon & Kee), 1958)
* Motorbike (New English Library, 1962)
* Yes from No-Man's Land (MacGibbon & Kee, 1965)
* The Dissent of Dominick Shapiro (MacGibbon & Kee, 1966)
* By the Waters of Whitechapel (Bodley Head, 1969)
* The Passionate Past of Gloria Gaye (Secker and Warburg, 1971)
* Settle Down Simon Katz (Secker and Warburg, 1973)
* Partners (Secker and Warburg, 1975)
* On Margate Sands (Secker and Warburg, 1978)
* The Odyssey of Samuel Glass (David Paul, 2012)

### Plays

* The Hamlet of Stepney Green (1959)
* The Dream Of Peter Mann (1960)
* Four Plays (The Hamlet of Stepney Green, Enter Solly Gold, Home Sweet Honeycomb, The Lemmings) (1964)
* Playing Sinatra (1992)
* Dreams Of Anne Frank (1993)
* Plays One (Playing Sinatra, The Hamlet of Stepney Green, Ezra) (Oberon Books, 1999)
* Plays Two (Dreams of Anne Frank, On Margate Sands, Call in the Night) (Oberon Books, 2000)
* Plays Three (The Dream of Peter Mann, Enter Solly Gold, Who Shall I Be Tomorrow?) (Oberon Books, 2001)

### Poetry

* Poems (Bell & Baker Press, 1955)
* Poems and Songs (Scorpion Press, 1958)
* An Anemone For Antigone (1959)
* Erica I Want To Read You Something (1967)
* For the Record – Poems (Secker and Warburg, 1971)
* Barricades In West Hampstead (1988)
* Grandchildren and Other Poems (2000)
* Where Do People Go (The Happy Dragons' Press, 2004)
* This Room in the Sunlight: Collected Poems (David Paul, 2009)
* Anne Frank's Fragments from Nowhere (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2015)
* Love, Death and Other Joys (David Paul, 2018)

### Autobiography & misc.

* The World is a Wedding (MacGibbon & Kee, 1963; Five Leaves Publications, 2007)
* Neither Your Honey Nor Your Sting: An Offbeat History of the Jews (Robson, 1985)
* Shalom Bomb: Scenes from My Life (Oberon Books, 2000)
* Bernard Kops’ East End (Five Leaves Publications, 2006) [anthology]

## Secondary literature

* William Baker and Jeanette Roberts Shumaker: Bernard Kops - fantasist, London Jew, apocalyptic humorist, Madison [u.a.]: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2014, ISBN 978-1-61147-656-9.