Harold Pinter - Literature Literature Faber and Faber Ltd Biography Playwright Harold Pinter was born in Hackney, London, on 10 October 1930. He was educated at Hackney Downs Grammar School and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and Central School of Speech and Drama. His plays include The Room (1957), The Birthday Party (1958), The Dumb Waiter (1959), The Caretaker (1960), The Lover (1962), The Homecoming (1965), No Man's Land (1975), Mountain Language (1988), Moonlight (1993), Ashes to Ashes (1996) and Celebration (2000), first performed with The Room at the Almeida Theatre in London. His adaptation of Marcel Proust's novel Remembrance of Things Past was performed at the National Theatre in London in 2000.

He adapted many of his stage plays for radio and television and he wrote the screenplays to a number of films including The Servant (1963), The Quiller Memorandum (1965), The Go-Between (1970), The Last Tycoon (1974) and The Comfort of Strangers (1989), adapted from Ian McEwan's novel. He directed many productions of his own plays as well as plays by other writers, including James Joyce, Noel Coward, Tennessee Williams, David Mamet and Simon Gray, and acted on stage, film, television and radio. He was awarded a CBE in 1966, the German Shakespeare Prize in 1970, the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 1973 and the David Cohen British Literature Prize in 1995, and held honorary degrees from the Universities of Reading, Glasgow, East Anglia and Bristol, among others. In 2001 he was awarded the S.T. Dupont Golden PEN Award by the English Centre of International PEN. War (2003), is a collection of eight poems and one speech inspired by the subject of conflict.

Harold Pinter was married to the writer Lady Antonia Fraser and lived in London. In 2005, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died in December 2008. Critical perspective Harold Pinter achieved the ultimate distinction for a living dramatist. He spawned his own adjective: 'Pinteresque'. It is generally applied to a situation fraught with menace in which common speech camouflages a ferocious battle for territory. But there is much more to Pinter than masked conflict and hidden threat. His pervading theme is memory: the way our existence is haunted by a recollection, however fallible or imaginary, of some vanished world in which everything was secure, certain and fixed. Pinter began his career as a repertory actor and occasional poet published in small magazines. Acting gave him an insight into the practicalities of stagecraft: poetry taught him about the precise placement of words. Both skills were evident in his short first play, The Room (1957): a highly effective piece about a reclusive heroine whose space is invaded by a succession of visitors climaxing in a blind Negro who bears a message calling on her to return home.

The basic pattern was repeated, with fascinating variations, in Pinter's first full-length stage-play, The Birthday Party (1960). In this case the truculent hero, Stanley, has hidden away in dingy seaside digs from which he is forcibly removed by two visitors, Goldberg and McCann, who represent an unnamed organisation. In Stanley's recollections of his days as a concert pianist, you hear the characteristic Pinter note: a yearning for some lost Eden as a refuge from the uncertain present. But the play is also clearly a political metaphor for the oppression of the individual by the state; and it's no accident that Pinter had himself earlier risked imprisonment for conscientious objection. Pinter's early fascination with politics was also evident in The Hothouse(1980), a bilious black comedy set in a state-run hospital in which nonconformists are classified as mental patients. Written in 1958, it was never publicly performed till 1980. It was only with The Caretaker (1960) that Pinter finally achieved personal fame and commercial success.

What everyone seized on, in this story of a tramp who accepts shelter from a brain-damaged benefactor and then tries to play him off against his smarter brother, was the verisimilitude of the dialogue: this was the language of the bus-queue or the cheap 'caff', with its pauses, repetitions and hidden desires, raised to the level of poetry. Yet it is also an acutely observant play about power and pipe dreams: about the desire for domination and about the human need for illusions. Which is presumably why to this day it is still performed all over the world. Pinter's immaculate ear for dialogue led to him writing an impressive trio of 1960s films - The Servant, Accident and The Go-Between - all directed by Joseph Losey. But it was The Homecoming (1965) that confirmed his supremacy amongst his generation of stage-dramatists. It is a deeply disturbing play about Ruth, the wife of an academic, who opts to stay with her crude, aggressive in-laws rather than return with her husband to the sterile life of an American campus.

What shocked people was both Ruth's apparent complicity in the family's desire that she should support them through prostitution and the absence of any conventional moral framework. But Ruth is more manipulator than victim who negotiates her homecoming very much on her own terms. And Pinter's refusal to moralise is part of what made him distinctive as a dramatist: his plays, for the most part, are pieces of social evidence, which he leaves us to interpret or resolve. Pinter revolutionised dramatic language through his use of demotic speech. But just as important was his banishment of authorial omniscience: the idea that the writer knows everything there is to know about his characters from start to finish. After The Homecoming, however, Pinter's work underwent a formal change. He dispensed with the impedimenta of realism, such as exits and entrances, to present us with more distilled works that deal with his recurrent themes: time, memory, the power of the past over the present. In Old Times (1971) Deeley and Anna battle for possession of Kate: Deeley's wife and Anna's best friend.

But their chosen weapon is reminiscence: even who saw the film of Odd Man Out with whom becomes a crucial tactic. And, at one point, Anna gnomically expresses the play's governing idea: 'There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened. There are things I remember which may never have happened but as I recall them so they take place.' In the still more complex No Man's Land (1975) - easily Pinter's bleakest play - we witness an extraordinary encounter between a wealthy immured writer, Hirst, who seems tormented and crippled by the past and a Bohemian butterfly, Spooner, who has no fixed identity but who simply re-invents himself as he goes along. And in Betrayal (1978) Pinter reverses conventional chronology to explore the multiple deceptions involved in a triangular relationship: far from being a simple adultery-play, it is really about the endlessly corrosive nature of betrayal which infects lovers' trust, male friendship, youthful idealism and even one's sense of self.

Accused sometimes of retreating into private worlds, Pinter from the mid-1980s onwards answered his critics and expressed his sense of moral outrage with a series of pungent, political plays dealing with abuse of human rights. One For The Road (1984) demonstrates how torturers invoke God and country in order to justify their actions. Mountain Language (1988) depicts victimisation through suppression of language. Ashes to Ashes (1996) moves outwards from a man's interrogation of a woman about her lover to admit the Holocaust. But although these plays may lhave looked like a move into new territory for Pinter, they in fact marked a return to the political preoccupations that haunt his early work. Even the teaming of Pinter's play, Celebration (2000), with his earliest work, The Room, emphasised the unity of his sensibility and constancy of his obsessions.

Set in a smart London restaurant, Celebration ostensibly satirises the coarse, crude materialism of a group of posh diners: the joker in the pack is a young Waiter who eavesdrops on the clients' conversations and uses them as a starting-point for his own fantasies about his grandfather. But once again Pinter uses memory not just as a dramatic device but as a key to understanding. The diners live in a world of instant gratification. The Waiter's memories of his grandfather evoke a world of familial closeness and natural beauty that is totally alien to the sex-obsessed diners. In 1957 Pinter set his first play in a dingy bedsit. 43 years later his chosen milieu was a swank restaurant. Yet, although the context may have been radically changeable, Pinter's obsessions remained very much what they always were, the hidden poetry of vernacular speech, the unfathomable mystery of human existence and the power of memory, however fallible, to convey the paradise we have all lost.

Michael Billington, 2002 For an in-depth critical review see Harold Pinter by Mark Batty (Northcote House, 2001: Writers and their Work Series). Harold Pinter - Writer - Films as Writer:, Films as Director:, Films as Actor:, Publications Harold Pinter - Writer Harold Pinter - Writer Writer. Nationality: British. Born: Hackney, London, 10 October 1930. Education: Attended Hackney Downs Grammar School, London; Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London. Family: Married 1) the actress Vivien Merchant, 1956 (divorced 1980), one son; 2) the writer Lady Antonia Fraser, 1980. Career: 1950—professional debut as actor under name David Baron; 1957—first play produced—followed by a series of plays; 1963—first film as writer, The Servant ; Harold Pinter also stage director; 1973—first film as director, Butley ; 1973—associate director, National Theatre, London.

Awards: New York Film Critics Award, for The Servant , 1963; British Academy Award, for The Pumpkin Eater , 1964, and The Go-Between , 1971. Commander, Order of the British Empire, 1966. Address: c/o ACTAC Ltd., 16 Cadogan Lane, London S.W.1, England.

Films as Writer: The Servant (Losey) (+ ro as society man); The Caretaker ( The Guest ) (Donner) 1964 The Accident (Losey) (+ ro as Bell) 1968 The French Lieutenant's Woman (Reisz) 1983 Turtle Diary (Irvin) (+ ro as man in bookshop) 1987 The Room (Altman) (adapter); The Dumb Waiter (Altman); The Birthday Party (Ives—for TV) (+ ro) 1988 Mountain Language (+ d—for TV) 1989 L'ami retrouvé ( Reunion ; Der Wiedergefundene Freund ) (Schatzberg); The Heat of the Day (Morahan—for TV) 1990 The Comfort of Strangers (Schrader); The Lover (Kemp-Welch) 1993 Bez pogovora (Jovanovic—for TV) 2000 The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (Billington) (as Steven Hench) 1973 Breaking the Code (Wise—for TV) (as John Smith) 1997 Mojo

 (Butterworth) (as Sam Ross) 1998 Ritratto di Harold Pinter (Andò) (as himself) 1999 Mansfield Park (Rozema) (as Sir Thomas Bertram) 2000 The Birthday Party and Other Plays , London, 1960.

The Caretaker , London, 1960. A Slight Ache and Other Plays , London, 1961. The Collection , London, 1962. The Collection , and The Lover , 1963. The Dwarfs and Eight Revue Sketches , New York, 1965. The Homecoming , London, 1965. Tea Party and Other Plays , London, 1967. Landscape , London, 1968. Landscape , and Silence , London, 1969. Five Screenplays (includes The Caretaker , The Pumpkin Eater , Accident , The Servant , The Quiller Memorandum ), London, 1971; modified edition, omitting The Caretaker and including The Go-Between , London, 1971. Old Times , London and New York, 1971. Monologue , London, 1973. No Man's Land , London and New York, 1975.

Plays , 4 vols., London, 1975–81; as Complete Works , New York, 4 vols., 1977–81. The Proust Screenplay: À la Recherche du Temps Perdu , New York, 1977. Betrayal , London, 1978. The Hothouse , London and New York, 1980. Family Voices , London and New York, 1981. Other Places , London, 1983. One for the Road , London, 1984. Mountain Language , London, 1988. The Heat of the Day , London, 1989. Moonlight , New York, 1995. Ashes to Ashes , New York, 1997. The Proust Screenplay: A la Recherche du Temps Perdu , New York, 1999. The Hothouse , New York, 1999. By PINTER: other books— Poems and Prose 1949–1977 , London, 1978.

I Know the Place (poetry), London, 1979. The Screenplay of The French Lieutenant's Woman , London, 1981. The Comfort of Strangers and Other Screenplays , London, 1990. The Dwarfs (fiction), London, 1990. I Know the Place , New York, 1990. Party Time & the New World Order , New York, 1993. One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets , New York, 1995. 99 Poems in Translation , New York, 1997. Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics, 1948–1998 , New York, 1999. By PINTER: articles— Sight and Sound (London), Autumn 1966. Positif (Paris), July/August 1985. Film Comment (New York), May/June 1989. On PINTER: books— Hayman, Ronald, Harold Pinter , London, 1968.

Gordon, Lois, Strategems to Uncover Nakedness: The Dramas of Harold Pinter , Columbia, Missouri, 1969. Taylor, John Russell, Harold Pinter , London, 1969. Esslin, Martin, The Peopled Wound: The Plays of Harold Pinter , London, 1970, revised edition, London, 1977. Hollis, James H., Harold Pinter , Carbondale, Illinois, 1970. Sykes, Arlene, Harold Pinter , Brisbane, Queensland, 1970. Burkman, Katherine H., The Dramatic World of Harold Pinter , Columbus, Ohio, 1971. Ganz, Arthur, editor, Pinter: A Collection of Critical Essays , Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1972. Trussler, Simon, The Plays of Harold Pinter , London, 1973. Quigley, Austin E., The Pinter Problem , Princeton, New Jersey, 1975.

Dukore, Bernard F., Where Laughter Stops: Pinter's Tragi-Comedy , Columbia, Missouri, 1977. Gale, Steven H., Butter's Going Up: A Critical Analysis of Harold Pinter's Plays , Durham, North Carolina, 1977. Bold, Alan, editor, Harold Pinter: You Never Heard Such Silence , London, 1984. Klein, Joanne, Making Pictures: The Pinter Screenplay , Columbus, Ohio, 1985. Cahn, Victor L., Gender and Power in the Plays of Harold Pinter , New York, 1993. Hall, Ann. C., A Kind of Alaska: Women in the Plays of O'Neill, Pinter, and Shepard , Carbondale, Illinois, 1993. Homan, Sidney, Pinter's Odd Man Out: Staging and Filming Old Times, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, 1993. Knowles, Ronald, Understanding Harold Pinter , Columbia, South Carolina, 1995.

Merritt, Susan H., Pinter in Play: Critical Strategies & the Plays of Harold Pinter , Durham, 1995. Regal, Martin S., Harold Pinter: A Question of Timing , New York, 1995. Gussow, Mel, Conversations with Pinter , New York, 1996. Billington, Michael, The Life & Work of Harold Pinter , New York, 1997. Peacock, D. Keith, Harold Pinter & the New British Theatre , Westport, 1997. Armstrong, Raymond, Kafka & Pinter: Shadow-Boxing: The Struggle Between Father & Son , New York, 1999. On PINTER: articles— Cinema Nuovo (Turin), May/June 1967. Cinema Nuovo (Turin), July/August 1967. Imagen y Sonido , September 1967. Roud, Richard, in Sight and Sound (London), Summer 1971. Jones, Edward T., on The Go-Between in Literature/Film Quarterly (Salisbury, Maryland), April 1973.

National Film Theatre Booklet (London), February 1978. Avant-Scène (Paris), Autumn 1978. Literature/Film Quarterly (Salisbury, Maryland), vol. 10, no. 1, 1982. Skoop (Amsterdam), vol. 22, 4 June 1986. Literature/Film Quarterly (Salisbury, Maryland), April and July 1988. Chase, D., "The Pinter Principle," in American Film (Washington, D.C.), October 1990. Films in Review (New York), vol. 43, July/August 1992. Literature/Film Quarterly (Salisbury, Maryland), vol. 21, no. 1, 1993. Tucker, Stephanie, "Despair Not, Neither to Presume," in Literature/Film Quarterly (Salisbury, Maryland), vol. 24, no. 1, January 1996. Hudgins, Christopher C., "Lolita 1995: the Four Filmscripts," in Literature/Film Quarterly (Salisbury, Maryland), vol. 25, no.

1, January 1997. Dodson, Mary Lynn, "The French Lieutenant's Woman: Pinter and Reisz's Adaptation of John Fowles's Adaptation," in Literature/ Film Quarterly (Salisbury, Maryland), vol. 26, no. 4, October 1998. * * * Harold Pinter began his professional career as an actor, touring the provinces with English and Irish repertory companies before achieving success as a major playwright and screenwriter. Although he has made subsequent acting appearances, generally in small roles in his own films (among them The Servant and Accident ), and has acquired a strong reputation as a director of plays for the British stage, Pinter's fame owes much to his complex, nuance-charged writing for stage and screen. In his early play The Birthday Party , filmed in 1968, two mysterious men terrorize a third named Stanley as he cowers in a tawdry English rooming house. The three enact a series of ritual games in an atmosphere of mounting menace, culminating in the utterly broken Stanley's removal to an unspecified destination—presumably an asylum.

In post-absurdist fashion, Pinter denies his audience virtually all clarification of his characters' histories and likely futures, prompting one frustrated viewer to write: "I would be obliged if you would kindly explain to me the meaning of your play. These are the points which I do not understand: 1. Who are the two men? 2. Where did Stanley come from? 3. Were they all supposed to be normal? You will appreciate that without the answers to my questions, I cannot fully understand your play." Pinter replied: "Dear Madam: I would be obliged if you would kindly explain to me the meaning of your letter. These are the points which I do not understand: 1. Who are you? 2. Where do you come from? 3. Are you supposed to be normal? You will understand that without the answers to my questions, I cannot fully understand your letter." This interchange helps to define the characteristically elusive Pinter style and attitude. Both are based on familiarity with life's perpetual uncertainty. The little dramas we observe in life, sometimes as unwilling participants, tend to occur without benefit of sequential beginning, middle, or end. People say one thing and mean another.

Strangers, casual acquaintances, close family members deny us information they prefer to withhold. Bizarre events unfold without preparation. Moods change with mercurial suddenness. To live is to be continually perplexed by others. Pinter's dramatic methods seek to reenforce such a view of life. He rejects traditional story telling structures in favor of fractured chronology and elliptical dialogue. "The desire for verification on the part of all of us, with regard to our own experience and the experience of others, is understandable but cannot always be satisfied," he once wrote. "We are also faced with the immense difficulty, if not the impossibility of verifying the past. I don't mean merely years ago, but yesterday, this morning." Time and memory thus serve as central Pinter subjects, functioning both technically and thematically to deny the audience the verification it instinctively desires. In Betrayal , for example, Pinter examines the romantic triangle that has developed among a married couple and the husband's best friend by reversing chronology and moving steadily backward in time, concluding the drama when the adulterous relationship first began, nine years before the start of the film.

The backward telling of the tale radically alters the viewer's response and shifts attention from plot outcome to narrative point of view. The audience is mesmerized by its uncertainty, forced repeatedly to question who knew what about the relationship and when. Whose memory portrays events most accurately? The answer of course is no one's: "We all interpret a common experience quite differently," Pinter has said. "There's a common ground all right, but it's more like quicksand." Time also figures prominently in Pinter's adaptation of three difficult novels whose narrative ambiguity he reinterprets in filmic terms. In The Go-Between (from L. P. Hartley's novel), the past is remembered as "a foreign country; they do things differently there." Here, the shifting narrative between past and present enables Pinter to emphasize the effects of cruelty so endemic to the British class system, a subject also explored in his adaptation of John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman , a novel whose dazzling narrative pyrotechnics would appear to have rendered it undramatizable. Pinter's controversial solution rests on an alternation between Fowles's Victorian England and the enactment of that world in a film being shot in contemporary London.

Actors acting in a film within the film thus become an appropriate Pinter metaphor for the invisible line between illusion and reality, with one story implicitly commenting on the other. Pinter's characters say less than they mean as a thin veneer of civilized restraint keeps threatening to erupt into violence. In Accident , Homecoming , Betrayal , and other screenplays, sexual power struggles are obliquely fought in language that mocks the comedy of manners. His dialogue reads as if it were meant to be spewed, not spoken, to be articulated in tones of innuendo and menace that suggest meaning underived from the words alone. In that respect, Pinter's experience as actor and director has made a substantial if unrecognized contribution to the dynamics of his language. Pinter also wrote the screen adaptations of novels for several films which were released in the early 1990s, including Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale , a feminist, Orwellian classic about a woman's ordeal under the authoritarian rule of the extreme right. He also wrote the screenplay for Ian McEwan's The Comfort of Strangers , the story of a young couple whose vacation in Venice evolves into a nightmare of sadomasochistic torture and murder.

Undoubtedly Pinter's greatest screenwriting challenge of the early 1990s was the offer to write the screenplay of Franz Kafka's The Trial . Pinter stated in 1992, that when he was first asked to adapt The Trial , "I immediately said yes, since I have, more or less, been waiting for this opportunity for 45 years." That Pinter was greatly inspired by Kafka would seem self-evident to anyone who had studied Pinter's early works. The Birthday Party in particular, has often been directly compared to The Trial by Pinter's critics. The Trial is, of course, the story of Joseph K., the senior bank clerk who awakens on his 30th birthday to find himself arrested by an unknown court, for an unknown crime, from which he can never be exonerated. The Trial was released in 1993 by Angelika Films. It was filmed in Prague and was directed by David Jones who also directed the film version of Pinter's play Betrayal . Overall, Pinter's adaptation is quite faithful to the novel.

The novel's famous chapter "The Cathedral" is noticeably abridged, but this is obviously necessary due to the time constraints of the filmic form. The colorful and beautiful backdrop created for Joseph K.'s nightmarish world is a sharp contrast to Orson Welles's 1962, futuristic black-and-white adaptation of The Trial . Pinter explained in an interview that the film was intended to be "very plain without grotesqueries," unlike Welles's version which he described as being a "phantasmagoria." The use of surreal special effects and lighting in The Trial would certainly have only detracted from this ultimate marriage of Kafka and Pinter. For Pinter is a dramatist and screenwriter whose gift it has been to make nightmarish worlds unfold by disrupting the ordinary, through the powers of language and silence. —Mark W. Estrin, updated by Áine Doyle User Contributions: Harold Pinter - Bio-bibliography Harold Pinter The Nobel Prize in Literature 2005 Harold Pinter Biobibliographical Notes Harold Pinter was born on 10 October 1930 in the London borough of Hackney, son of a Jewish dressmaker.

Growing up, Pinter was met with the expressions of anti-Semitism, and has indicated its importance for his becoming a dramatist. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was evacuated from London at the age of nine, returning when twelve. He has said that the experience of wartime bombing has never lost its hold on him. Back in London, he attended Hackney Grammar School where he played Macbeth and Romeo among other characters in productions directed by Joseph Brearley. This prompted him to choose a career in acting. In 1948 he was accepted at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1950, he published his first poems. In 1951 he was accepted at the Central School of Speech and Drama. That same year, he won a place in Anew McMaster's famous Irish repertory company, renowned for its performances of Shakespeare. Pinter toured again between 1954 and 1957, using the stage name of David Baron. Between 1956 and 1980 he was married to actor Vivien Merchant. In 1980 he married the author and historian Lady Antonia Fraser.

Pinter made his playwriting debut in 1957 with The Room, presented in Bristol. Other early plays were The Birthday Party (1957), at first a fiasco of legendary dimensions but later one of his most performed plays, and The Dumb Waiter (1957). His conclusive breakthrough came with The Caretaker (1959), followed by The Homecoming (1964) and other plays. Harold Pinter is generally seen as the foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the 20th century. That he occupies a position as a modern classic is illustrated by his name entering the language as an adjective used to describe a particular atmosphere and environment in drama: "Pinteresque". Pinter restored theatre to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretence crumbles. With a minimum of plot, drama emerges from the power struggle and hide-and-seek of interlocution.

Pinter's drama was first perceived as a variation of absurd theatre, but has later more aptly been characterised as "comedy of menace", a genre where the writer allows us to eavesdrop on the play of domination and submission hidden in the most mundane of conversations. In a typical Pinter play, we meet people defending themselves against intrusion or their own impulses by entrenching themselves in a reduced and controlled existence. Another principal theme is the volatility and elusiveness of the past. It is said of Harold Pinter that following an initial period of psychological realism he proceeded to a second, more lyrical phase with plays such as Landscape (1967) and Silence (1968) and finally to a third, political phase with One for the Road (1984), Mountain Language (1988), The New World Order (1991) and other plays. But this division into periods seems oversimplified and ignores some of his strongest writing, such as No Man's Land (1974) and Ashes to Ashes (1996).

In fact, the continuity in his work is remarkable, and his political themes can be seen as a development of the early Pinter's analysing of threat and injustice. Since 1973, Pinter has won recognition as a fighter for human rights, alongside his writing. He has often taken stands seen as controversial. Pinter has also written radio plays and screenplays for film and television. Among his best-known screenplays are those for The Servant (1963), The Accident (1967), The Go-Between (1971) and The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981, based on the John Fowles novel). Pinter has also made a pioneering contribution as a director. This bibliography includes published works only. Works in English 1. Plays (year of writing; year of publication; year of first performance) The Room (1957). – in The Birthday Party, and Other Plays. – London : Methuen, 1960. – (Bristol, 1957) The Birthday Party (1957). – in The Birthday Party, and Other Plays. – London : Methuen, 1960.

– (Arts Theatre, Cambridge, 28 April 1958) The Dumb Waiter (1957). – in The Birthday Party, and Other Plays. – London : Methuen, 1960. – (Kleines Haus, Frankfurt, February 1959) A Slight Ache (1958). – in A Slight Ache and Other Plays. – London : Methuen, 1961. – (Broadcast 1959) The Hothouse (1958). – in The Hothouse. – London : Eyre Methuen, 1980. – (Hampstead Theatre, London, 24 April 1980) The Caretaker (1959). – in The Caretaker. – London : Methuen, 1960. – (Arts Theatre, London, 27 April 1960) A Night Out (1959). – in Slight Ache and Other Plays. – London : Methuen, 1961.

– (Broadcast on the BBC Third Programme, 1 March 1960) Night School (1960). – in Tea Party and Other Plays. – London : Methuen, 1967. – (Broadcast on Associated Rediffusion Television, 21 July 1960) The Dwarfs (1960). – in Slight Ache and Other Plays. – London : Methuen, 1961. – (Broadcast 1960; New Arts Theatre, London, 18 September 1963) The Collection (1961). – in The Collection. – London : French, 1963 (1962?) ; in The Collection, and The Lover. – London : Methuen, 1963. – (Televised 1961) The Lover (1962). – in The Collection, and The Lover. – London : Methuen, 1963. – (Televised 1961) Tea Party (1964). – in Tea Party and Other Plays. – London : Methuen, 1967.

– (Eastside Playhouse, New York, October 1968) The Homecoming (1964). – in The Homecoming. – London : Methuen, 1965. – (Aldwych Theatre, London, 3 June 1965) The Basement (1966). – in Tea Party and Other Plays. – London : Methuen, 1967. – (Televised 1967) Landscape (1967). – in Landscape. – London : Pendragon Press, 1968 ; in Landscape, and Silence. – London : Methuen, 1969. – (Broadcast 1968) Silence (1968). – in Landscape, and Silence. – London : Methuen, 1969. – (Aldwych Theatre, London, 2 July 1969) Old Times (1970). – in Old Times. – London : Methuen, 1971. – (Aldwych Theatre, London, 1 June 1971) Monologue (1972). – in Monologue.

– London : Covent Garden Press, 1973. – (Televised on the BBC Television, 13 April 1973) No Man's Land (1974). – in No Man's Land. – London : Methuen, 1975. – (Old Vic, London 23 April, 1975) Betrayal (1978). – in Betrayal. – London : Eyre Methuen, 1978. – (National Theatre, London, November 1978) Family Voices (1980). – in Family Voices. – London : Next Editions, 1981. – (Broadcast on Radio 3, 22 January 1981) Other Places (1982). – in Other Places : Three Plays. – London : Methuen, 1982. – (Cottesloe Theatre, London, October 1982) A Kind of Alaska (1982). – in A Kind of Alaska. – London : French, 1982 ; in Other Places : Three Plays. – London : Methuen, 1982.

– (Cottesloe Theatre, London, October 1982) Victoria Station (1982). – in Victoria Station. – London : French, 1982 ; in Other Places : Three Plays. – London : Methuen, 1982. – (Cottesloe Theatre, London, October 1982) One for the Road (1984). – in One for the Road. – London : Methuen, 1984. – (Lyric Theatre Studio, Hammersmith, March 1984) Mountain Language (1988). – in Mountain Language. – London : French, 1988 ; in Mountain Language. – London : Faber, 1988. – (National Theatre, London, 20 October 1988) The New World Order (1991). – in Granta (no 37), Autumn 1991. – (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London, 19 July 1991) Party Time (1991). – in Party Time. – London : Faber, 1991.

– (Almeida Theatre, London, 31 October 1991) Moonlight (1993). – in Moonlight. – London : Faber, 1993. – (Almeida Theatre, London, 7 September 1993) Ashes to Ashes (1996). – in Ashes to Ashes. – London : Faber, 1996. – (Royal Court at the Ambassadors Theatre, London, 12 September 1996) Celebration (1999). – in Celebration. – London : Faber, 2000. – (Almeida Theatre, London, 16 March 2000) Remembrance of Things Past (2000). – in Remembrance of Things Past. – London : Faber, 2000. – (Cottesloe Theatre, London, 23 November, 2000) 2. Additional The Proust Screenplay : À la recherche du temps perdu / by Harold Pinter, with the collaboration of Joseph Losey and Barbara Bray.

– New York : Grove Press, 1977 Poems and Prose 1949 –1977. – London : Methuen, 1978 The Dwarfs : a novel. – London : Faber, 1990 Various Voices : Poetry, Prose, Politics, 1948–1998. – London : Faber, 1998 Collected Screenplays. 1. – London : Faber, 2000. – Content : The Servant, The Pumpkin Eater, The Quiller Memorandum, The Accident, The Last Tycoon, Langrishe Go Down Collected Screenplays. 2. – London : Faber, 2000. – Content : The Go-Between ; The Proust Screenplay ; Victory ; Turtle Diary ; Reunion Collected Screenplays. 3. – London : Faber, 2000. – Content : The French Lieutenant's Woman ; The Heat of the Day ; The Comfort of Strangers ; The Trial ; The Dreaming Child The Disappeared and Other Poems. – London : Enitharmon, 2002 Press Conference.

– London : Faber, 2002 War : [Eight Poems and One Speech]. – London : Faber, 2003 Works in French C'était hier / traduit de l'anglais par Éric Kahane. – Paris: Gallimard, 1971. – Traduction de: Old Times No man's land ; suivi de Le monte plat ; Une petite douleur ; Paysage ; et de Dix sketches / adaptation française d'Éric Kahane. – Paris: Gallimard, 1979 La collection ; suivi de L'amant ; et de Le gardien / trad. de l'anglais par Éric Kahane. – Paris: Gallimard, 1984. – Traduction de: The Collection ; The Lover ; The Caretaker L'anniversaire / trad. de l'anglais par Éric Kahane. – Paris: Gallimard, 1985. – Traduction de: The Birthday Party Le retour / trad. de l'anglais par Éric Kahane. – Paris: Gallimard, 1985.

– Traduction de: The Homecoming Trahisons ; suivi de Hothouse ; Un pour la route: et autres pièces / adapt. française d'Éric Kahane. – Paris: Gallimard, 1987 La lune se couche ; suivi de Ashes to Ashes ; Langue de la montagne ; Une soirée entre amis: et autres textes / trad. de l'anglais par Éric Kahane. – Paris: Gallimard, 1998 Les nains : roman / trad. de l'anglais par Alain Delahaye. – Paris: Gallimard, 2000. – Traduction de: The Dwarfs Autres voix : prose, poésie, politique, 1948–1998 / trad. de l'anglais par Jean Pavans, Isabelle D. Philippe et Natalie Zimmermann. – Montricher: Éd. Noir sur blanc, 2001. – Traduction de: Various Voices La guerre / trad. de l'anglais par Jean Pavans.

– Paris: Gallimard, 2003. – Traduction de: War Célébration ; La chambre / trad. de l'anglais par Jean Pavans. – Paris: Gallimard, 2003 Le scénario Proust : À la recherche du temps perdu / by Harold Pinter avec la collaboration de Joseph Losey et Barbara Bray ; trad. de l'anglais par Jean Pavans. - Paris : Gallimard, 2003. - Traduction de: The Proust Screenplay : À la recherche du temps perdu Works in Swedish Apart from anthologies no work by Harold Pinter has yet been published in book form in Swedish. Works in German Tiefparterre / Neu durchges. Fassung nach d. Übers. von Willy H. Thiem. – Reinbek bei Hamburg : Rowohlt, 1967. – Originaltitel : The Basement Teegesellschaft / nach d. Übers. von Willy H. Thiem, d. Bühnen gegenüber Ms. – Reinbek bei Hamburg : Rowohlt, 1968.

– Originaltitel: Tea Party Dramen / Neu durchges. Fassung nach d. Übers. von Willy H. Thiem u.a. – Reinbek bei Hamburg : Rowohlt, 1970 Alte Zeiten ; Landschaft ; Schweigen : 3 Theaterstücke / Dt. von Renate u. Martin Esslin. – Reinbek bei Hamburg : Rowohlt, 1972 Betrogen / Dt. von H. M. Ledig-Rowohlt. – Reinbek bei Hamburg : Rowohlt, 1978. – Originaltitel : Betrayal Das Treibhaus / Dt. von Heinrich Maria Ledig-Rowohlt. – Reinbek bei Hamburg : Rowohlt, 1980. – Originaltitel: The Hothouse Der stumme Diener : ausgew. Dramen / Übers. aus d. Engl. von Willy H. Thiem ... Ausw. u. Nachw. von Klaus Köhler. – Leipzig : Insel-Verlag, 1981 Familienstimmen / Dt. von Heinrich Maria Ledig-Rowohlt.

– Reinbek bei Hamburg : Rowohlt-Theater-Verlag, 1981. – Originaltitel: Family Voices Einen für unterwegs / Dt. von Heinrich Maria Ledig-Rowohlt. – Reinbek bei Hamburg : Rowohlt-Theater-Verlag, 1984. – Originaltitel: One For the Road Genau / Dt. von Heinrich Maria Ledig-Rowohlt. – Reinbek bei Hamburg : Rowohlt, Theater-Verlag, 1986. – Originaltitel: Precisely An anderen Orten : 5 neue Kurzdramen / Dt. von Heinrich Maria Ledig-Rowohlt. – Reinbek bei Hamburg : Rowohlt, 1988 Die Geburtstagsfeier ; Der Hausmeister ; Die Heimkehr ; Betrogen. – Nach den Übers. von Willy H. Thiem. – Reinbek bei Hamburg : Rowohlt, 1990 Die Zwerge : Roman / Dt. von Johanna Walser und Martin Walser. – Reinbek bei Hamburg : Rowohlt, 1994.

– Originaltitel : The Dwarfs Mondlicht und andere Stücke. – Reinbek bei Hamburg : Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verl., 2000 Krieg / Aus dem Engl. von Elisabeth Plessen und Peter Zadek. – Hamburg : Rogner und Bernhard bei Zweitausendeins, 2003. – Originaltitel : War Harold Pinter: the most original, stylish and enigmatic writer in the post-war revival of British theatre - Telegraph Theatre great Harold Pinter dies 25 Dec 2008 Although he had some sympathy for anyone intellectually frustrated by his writings, in the 1960s Pinter found himself provoked into saying more than he wished. When asked what his plays were about, he replied: “The weazel under the cocktail cabinet.” It was a remark he came to regret; and he later protested that he had meant nothing by it, insisting that he never regarded himself as the one authority on his plays “just because I wrote the damn things.” The only son of a working class Jewish tailor in the East End of London, Harold Pinter was born at Hackney on October 10, 1930.

The Pinter family had migrated to Britain from Portugal where their name had been da Pinta. Harold was educated at Hackney Downs Grammar School where he came under the influence of a young English teacher called Joseph Brearley who directed him as Macbeth and Romeo and organised theatre outings. During the war the Harold was evacuated three times and he later recalled that “separation made a great impact on me.” Leaving school at 17 he trained as an actor both at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Central School of Speech and Drama before registering at 18 as a conscientious objector when called up for national service. He faced two tribunals and two civil trials and the risk of a prison sentence. He defended himself and his father paid the £80 fine. Before he was 20 he saw few plays but wrote hundreds of poems, short prose pieces in monologue or dialogue form and a semi-autobiographical novel, The Dwarfs, which he eventually published when he was 60. In 1950, under the stage name of David Baron, Pinter spent two years with the actor-manager Anew McMaster’s classical theatre troupe touring Ireland (1950-52).

Among the scores of roles he was Horatio to Kenneth Haigh’s Laertes in Hamlet and Bassanio to Barry Foster’s Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice. Nearly 20 years later he published Mac (1968), an affectionate tribute to MacMaster. He joined Donald Wolfit’s roving Shakespearean company at the King’s, Hammersmith, in 1953 before a seven-year stint in weekly rep at Chesterfield, Huddersfield, Colchester, Bournemouth, Torquay, Birmingham, Palmer’s Green, Worthing, and Richmond. His roles included romantic leads, killers and policemen. It was while he was performing in Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution that he first met the actress Vivien Merchant, whom he married in 1956. That same year Pinter wrote his first play, The Room, a one-actor, which he sent to a friend at Bristol University who had asked for a script for the Sunday Times’s annual student drama festival. Acted by the drama department, it showed a lorry driver and his wife in a rented flat.

They are visited first by a younger married couple in the belief that the flat is to let, and then by a blind black man from the basement whom the husband finally kicks to death, whereupon his wife goes blind. By casting doubts throughout the dialogue on what the audience took to be facts about a situation or a relationship, Pinter crudely created an air of compelling mystery which was to serve all his drama. He learned to do it with increasing subtlety, but the device, until audiences learned to accept it, or at least to grapple with it, explained his early rejection. The Birthday Party (1957) also baffled its first audiences as they wondered what to make of a much-mothered lodger in a seaside boarding house and the two threatening men who have called on him with what seem like sinister intentions. At its first public performance The Birthday Party created so much perplexity and exasperation that its author thought of giving up the stage. It reached the Lyric, Hammersmith, after weeks at Cambridge, Oxford and Wolverhampton and was withdrawn after a run of six nights and two matinees. “Wallows in symbolism and revels in obscurity”, declared The Daily Telegraph.

“What it all means only Mr Pinter knows”, groaned the critic of what was then the Manchester Guardian. When even The Observer’s Kenneth Tynan, champion of new stage writers, especially of the avant-garde, saw “no sign of promise” in Pinter’s first full-length work — a response Tynan later repented — the young author’s spirits sank utterly. They were restored, however, the day after the production was withdrawn, by a review written by Harold Hobson of the Sunday Times, who declared: “Mr Pinter, on the evidence of this work, possesses the most original, disturbing and arresting talent in theatrical London.” It took several years, other plays and a television broadcast of The Birthday Party before the penny began to drop for the general public, though for many people it never did; Pinter would always be dismissed as an artistic fraud, pretentious and obscure. For the televised version of The Birthday Party, in 1960, Pinter, if only to extend his audience, was unusually forthcoming. “This is a simple play,” he said, “something happens to a man called Stanley living in a seaside boarding house. Two men who terrify him call on him.

What they do provides the subject matter of the play, but I don’t explain why they have a terrifying effect on Stanley. I leave it to the audience to interpret.” Meanwhile Pinter had been invited, like many of the leading new stage writers of the day, to contribute to West End revues such as One To Another and Pieces of Eight, where his three or four-minute sketches began to acquire a cult following for their terseness, wit and satire. They ranged from purely verbal fantasy, as in Trouble at the Works, which drew from technical or industrial terminology with deadpan chatter about “the high speed taper shank spiral flute reamers” and “the fundamental side outlet relief with handwheel” to Dickensian studies of the cockney character, such as aged women tramps in an all-night café or a furious, paranoid woman at a bus stop insisting that a mild-looking man had made an improper proposal. With his second full-length play, The Caretaker, (Arts Theatre and Duchess Theatre, 1960) Pinter again fused murky reality with irrational fantasy in a language humming with enigma and danger. This time the reception was rapturous.

With Alan Bates and Peter Woodthorpe as the brothers in whose tumbledown south London premises their fearful, shabby guest, a nervous old tramp named Davies, tries to make himself at home, the play sealed Pinter’s reputation as a playwright who showed how speech was often used as a means of avoiding communication. Despite its success, English theatre managers were still wary of his work. The Dumb Waiter, for example, had its first public performance at Hamburg before the Hampstead Theatre Club staged its English premiere, after which it transferred to the Royal Court to form, in 1960, a double bill with The Room. Although houses were thin, the word was spreading that Pinter could be comic as well as strange, and with its portrait of two hired assassins awaiting instructions in a hotel basement The Dumb Waiter was both funny and frightening. Trying to meet orders barked at them through a speaking tube for all kinds of food from Eccles cake and potato crisps to exotic Italian dishes, the two cockney simpletons are only doing their puzzled best when the order for one of them to kill the other is about be obeyed at the final blackout.

If The Homecoming (Aldwych 1965), Pinter’s second masterwork, did not hit it off immediately with his growing public, it was probably because of its singularly evil atmosphere of sexual decadence in a north London butcher’s extended family when one of the sons, an academic, returns from America with a new, unknown daughter-in-law. Played with cool, suggestive elegance by Vivien Merchant, this powerful drama was Peter Hall’s first production of a full-length Pinter play for the Royal Shakespeare Company. It went on to become a rousing artistic success in London and America, though on its pre-Broadway tour, as on its pre-London tour it drove numerous “disgusted” spectators out of the theatre. Noting its “ultimate, breathtaking nastiness,” The Daily Telegraph declared that the author had “never put his art to more absorbing, hilarious or stylish purpose.” Moreover Hall’s production was a model of timing, “which is to say of well-timed pauses.” Pinter’s best known mannerism came, in fact, in three sizes.

The longest break was marked in the text “silence,” implying a character’s profound change of mood or attitude; the medium length pause was just marked “pause”, indicating a crisis and filled with unspoken meaning; and the briefest pause was marked by three dots. During the late 1960s and early 1970s Pinter began to write screenplays (The Go-Between and Accident) as well as acting in some of his own plays and directing other playwrights’ work. However, his next full-length play, No Man’s Land, did not appear until 1975. It was a resounding success with John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson renewing their stage partnership after their recent triumph in David Storey’s play, Home. No Man’s Land was an unrelenting puzzle but with actors of such quality and theatrical presence it did not matter. The setting was (supposedly) an elegant house near Hampstead Heath where the two main characters, Hirst and Spooner, poets and old literary friends (or had they actually even met?) compared contrasting fortunes, mutual histories and nostalgic memories watched over by a pair of modern thugs in suits.

Audiences had learned not to worry, if baffled, not to seek for symbolic or allegorical meanings or indeed to read too much into anything. Gielgud, as the scruffier of the two supposed old bookish acquaintances, modelled his appearance on W H Auden’s. In a televised interview, Richardson, referring to the two leading roles, observed: “They don’t quite know who they are. But that’s rather natural in a way. We don’t know exactly who we are, do we? We hardly know anybody else really completely .?.?. We’re a mystery to ourselves and other people.” As one critic wrote, “even the actors are beginning to get the hang of Pinter”. In 1975, at the height of his fame, Pinter’s private life became the subject of many newspaper columns and much dinner party discussion when he left Vivien Merchant for Lady Antonia Fraser, then married to the Conservative MP Sir Hugh Fraser. Vivien Merchant, devastated by the affair, spoke at length about the couple, telling the press that “he didn’t have to take a change of shoes. He can wear Antonia’s.

She has very big feet, you know.” Sir Hugh Fraser agreed to divorce his wife and Pinter moved into the Fraser’s matrimonial home in Campden Hill Square. Vivien Merchant, who had spiralled into depression and alcoholism, continued to fuel press interest and attempted to humiliate the couple by refusing to sign the papers for a decree absolute. She died two years after their divorce in 1980. Betrayal (1978) was Pinter’s first play since No Man’s Land, a triangular drama which told its story backwards to illustrate the slipperiness of truth, memory and language; but although he retained the familiar theatrical technique and sense of economy, he seemed to be reducing not only his output but also each item as if he had less and less to write about. Admirers took heart, however from a lengthy one-actor, A Kind of Alaska (National Theatre, 1982) about a woman, played by Judi Dench who awoke from a 29-year condition of sleeping sickness.

Although Pinter’s interest in politics and human rights had been sparked in the early 1970s, his marriage to Lady Antonia seemed to mark a new period in which he became increasingly vociferous about his political beliefs. He was active in writer’s organisations such as PEN and Amnesty International and in June 1988 it was announced that he and his wife had formed a left-wing intellectual think-tank called the 20 June Group. Other members included John Mortimer, Melvyn Bragg, Margaret Drabble and Salman Rushdie. The response in the press was, unsurprisingly, mercilessly mocking, although Pinter viewed the ridicule as a form of suppression. “We are going to meet again and again until they break the windows and drag us out,” he raged. A year later the Pinter and his wife withdrew from the group after a succession of spectacular rows with fellow members. Those who had suspected that behind Pinter’s early silence about his private and public beliefs there beat an angry heart, which would not improve his art if it were ever exposed, did not take comfort from the his new political candour.

It began with a one-actor, One for the Road (Lyric, Hammersmith 1984) which described, without specifying where, a typical brutish police state interrogation of a helpless family. His other political plays, Mountain Language (1984) inspired by the plight of the Kurds and Party Time (1991) garnered some respect from Pinter fans, but little enthusiasm. Pinter became increasingly volatile when questioned on his political beliefs. At one social occasion, while he was raging over the alleged torture of the Kurds his hostess interrupted him suggesting that “there are two sides to every story.” “Not when you’ve got electrodes clamped to your balls, there aren’t,” he stormed. In 1993 he had a return to form with Moonlight (Almeida and Comedy 1993) in which a man of late middle age (Ian Holm) lay grumpily, on his death bed looking back on his life with sundry visitations or comments by his family and friends. Although it did not create the stir of his early plays, it was unmistakably the work of its author, at once sad and funny, strange and moving, and brimming with irony and anger.

Two other short plays, Ashes to Ashes (1996) and Celebration (1999) followed and in 2000, 18 years after he wrote it, his screenplay of Proust’s À La Recherche de Temps Perdus was staged as a play at the National Theatre. Of his numerous shorter plays A Slight Ache (Arts and Criterion 1959) was a demonstration of the games people played in their social and private lives. In Landscape and Silence (Aldwych 1969) and Old Times (Aldwych 1971) the mood was more poetic and reflective. Instead of playing games, childless couples ruminated uncertainly on their pasts, the vagaries of time and the possessive attitudes of others. Despite his reputation for irascibility, (he once told the 20 year old Alan Ayckbourn who was acting in one of his plays and wanted to know more about his character to “mind your own ------- business” and “just say the lines”) Pinter encouraged and inspired a number of dramatists and directors including David Mamet and Patrick Marber.

He was also a champion of the controversial young playwright, Sarah Kane, and gave the speech at a memorial event in her honour after her suicide in 1999. A respected actor in revivals of his own work on stage and screen, he was even more highly regarded as a director of not only his own and many other productions such as Robert Shaw’s The Man In The Glass Booth (1967), James Joyce’s Exiles (Aldwych 1970), and nearly all of Simon Gray’s plays including Butley (1971), Otherwise Engaged (1975), The Rear Column (1978), Close of Play (1979), Quartermaine’s Terms (1981) and The Common Pursuit (1984), as well as the film of Butley (1976) and the televised version of The Rear Column (1980).

Pinter’s television plays which included A Night Out (1959), Night School (1960), Tea Party (1965) and The Basement (1967) followed the pattern of superficial confusion and internal contradiction with a fastidious feeling for words and sudden strokes of humour amid the tension and the tense silences. Most of his screenplays — which were highly regarded and commercially very successful — were based on other people’s fiction, including The Servant (1963), The Pumpkin Eater (1964), and The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981). His publications include Family Voices (1981), The Dwarfs, a novel (1990) and Various Voices: prose, poetry, politics 1948-1998. An avid cricketer, he kept a large collection of Wisdens and listed his family, the theatre and cricket as his chief pleasures (later adding sex and drink). In later life he and Lady Antonia settled happily into domesticity and although he was saddened by his estrangement from Daniel, his son by Vivien Merchant, he was fond of his stepchildren and took great pleasure in Lady Antonia’s numerous grandchildren.

Their marriage endured, strengthened by the public dissection of their private life, and they seemed to find in each other the perfect foil. On one occasion when the playwright was inveighing against the world at a dinner party his wife attempted to placate him with a Chinese proverb: “If you sit by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies come floating by.” “Not good enough,” Pinter responded, “I want to be the one who pushed them in.” In 1995, upon receiving the David Cohen Literature Prize for lifetime achievement, Pinter summed up his love of writing: “I’m well aware that I have been described in some quarters as being 'enigmatic, taciturn, prickly, explosive and forbidding’. Well, I have my moods like anyone else, I won’t deny it. But my writing life ... has been informed by quite a different set of characteristics which have nothing whatsoever to do with those descriptions.

Quite simply, my writing life has been one of relish, challenge, excitement.” At the beginning of 2002, it was announced that Harold Pinter had been diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus and in March he published a poem, Cancer Cells, in the Guardian: The black cells will dry up and die/ Or sing with joy and have their way/ They breed so quietly night and day,/ You never know, they never say. Pinter was appointed CBE in 1966, CLit in 1998 and a Companion of Honour in 2002. He was an associate director of the National Theatre, London, from 1973 to 1983. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005. He is survived by his second wife, Lady Antonia Fraser, whom he married in 1980, a son from his first marriage, three stepsons and three stepdaughters. Harold Pinter | Authors | Faber & Faber Faber & Faber × Harold Pinter Harold Pinter was born in London in 1930.

He lived with Antonia Fraser from 1975 and they married in 1980. In 1995 he won the David Cohen British Literature Prize, awarded for a lifetime's achievement in literature. In 1996 he was given the Laurence Olivier Award for a lifetime's achievement in theatre. In 2002 he was made a Companion of Honour for services to literature. In 2005 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and, in the same year, the Wilfred Owen Award for Poetry and the Franz Kafka Award (Prague). In 2006 he was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize and, in 2007, the highest French honour, the Légion d'honneur. He died in December 2008. Sign up today for... 20% Discount at Faber.co.uk | Unique Events | News, Offers & Competitions *First Name Betrayal - Harold Pinter - Google Books Harold Pinter 2 Reviews THE STORY: The play begins in the present, with the meeting of Emma and Jerry, whose adulterous affair of seven years ended two years earlier.

Emma's marriage to Robert, Jerry's best friend, is now breaking up, and she needs someone to talk to. The What people are saying - Write a review Review: Betrayal User Review - David (Dafydd) - Goodreads I liked this play very much, it deals expertly with 'betrayal' on many and varied levels. I like its backward chronology and the gradual revelation of how the relationship between Emma and Jerry ... Read full review Selected pages View all » Common terms and phrases All Book Search results &raquo; About the author (1980) English playwright, poet, and political activist Harold Pinter was born on October 10, 1930, in London's East End. From childhood he was interested in literature and acting. He studied at both the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Central School of Speech and Drama. Pinter was a Nobel Prize-winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years.

His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964), and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted to film. Pinter published his first poems in 1950. He worked as a bit-part actor in a BBC Radio program and also toured with a Shakespearean troupe. Pinter has written over 30 plays, achieving great success internationally. He has also directed several of his dramas. Pinter was married to actress Vivien Merchant from 1956 to 1980, before wedding biographer Lady Antonia Fraser. From his first marriage he has a son who is a writer and musician. Pinter has won numerous prestigious literary prizes in poetry and theatre. He was awarded the Hermann Kesten Medallion for outstanding commitment on behalf of persecuted and imprisoned writers. He has been granted honorary degrees at universities in England, Scotland, the United States, Bulgaria, Ireland, Italy, and Greece. In 2005, Pinter received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died from cancer on December 24, 2008 at the age of 78.

Bibliographic information Harold Pinter | Penguin Random House Penguin Random House H P About the Author Harold Pinter was born in London in 1930. He lived with Antonia Fraser from 1975 and they married in 1980. In 1995 he won the David Cohen British Literature Prize, awarded for a lifetime’s achievement in literature. In 1996 he was given the Laurence Olivier Award for a lifetime’s achievement in theatre. In 2002 he was made a Companion of Honour for services to literature. In 2005 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and, in the same year, the Wilfred Owen Award for Poetry and the Franz Kafka Award (Prague). In 2006 he was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize and, in 2007, the highest French honour, the Légion d’honneur. He died in December 2008.

Sign me up for news about Harold Pinter Books by Harold Pinter published by Verso Books Harold Pinter News | Quotes | Wiki - UPI.com Latest Headlines Quotes Wiki Harold Pinter News Next Wiki Harold Pinter, CH, CBE (10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964), and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted to film. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1970), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Trial (1993), and Sleuth (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television, and film productions of his own and others' works. Pinter was born and raised in Hackney, east London, and educated at Hackney Downs School.

He was a sprinter and a keen cricket player, acting in school plays and writing poetry. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art but did not complete the course. He was fined for refusing National Service as a conscientious objector. Subsequently, he continued training at the Central School of Speech and Drama and worked in repertory theatre in Ireland and England. In 1956 he married actress Vivien Merchant and had a son, Daniel born in 1958. He left Merchant in 1975 and married author Antonia Fraser in 1980. Pinter's career as a playwright began with a production of The Room in 1957. His second play, The Birthday Party, closed after eight performances, but was enthusiastically reviewed by critic Harold Hobson. His early works were described by critics as "comedy of menace". Later plays such as No Man's Land (1975) and Betrayal (1978) became known as "memory plays". He directed productions of his own plays, also those of others for stage, television and film.

Pinter received over 50 awards, prizes, and other honours, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005 and the French Légion d'honneur in 2007. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License . It uses material from the Wikipedia article " Harold Pinter ." Quotes

Question: Which British writer married Harold Pinter in 1980?
Answer: (Lady) Antonia Fraser