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Harold Pinter



 
 
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE
Order of the British Empire

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a United Kingdom order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom....
 (10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008), an English
English people

The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England who speak English language in England. The English identity as a people is of early medieval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn....
 playwright
Playwright

A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes dramatic literature or drama. These works may be written specifically to be performed by actors or they may be closet dramas or literary works written using dramatic forms but not meant for performance....
, screenwriter
Screenwriter

Screenwriters or scenarists are scriptwriters who write the screenplays from which films and television programs are made.Most screenwriters start their careers writing on speculation....
, actor
Actor

An actor or actress is a person who acting in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio programming in that capacity....
, director, poet
Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry....
, author
Author

An author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created....
, political activist, and the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction" ....
, was at the time of his death considered by many "the most influential and imitated dramatist of his generation."

After publishing poetry as a teenager and acting in school plays, Pinter began his theatrical career in the mid-1950s as a repertory
Repertory

Repertory or rep, called stock in the US, is a term used in Western theatre and opera.A repertory theatre can be a theatre in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation....
 actor using the stage name David Baron.






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Harold Pinter, CH, CBE
Order of the British Empire

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a United Kingdom order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom....
 (10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008), an English
English people

The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England who speak English language in England. The English identity as a people is of early medieval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn....
 playwright
Playwright

A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes dramatic literature or drama. These works may be written specifically to be performed by actors or they may be closet dramas or literary works written using dramatic forms but not meant for performance....
, screenwriter
Screenwriter

Screenwriters or scenarists are scriptwriters who write the screenplays from which films and television programs are made.Most screenwriters start their careers writing on speculation....
, actor
Actor

An actor or actress is a person who acting in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio programming in that capacity....
, director, poet
Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry....
, author
Author

An author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created....
, political activist, and the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction" ....
, was at the time of his death considered by many "the most influential and imitated dramatist of his generation."

After publishing poetry as a teenager and acting in school plays, Pinter began his theatrical career in the mid-1950s as a repertory
Repertory

Repertory or rep, called stock in the US, is a term used in Western theatre and opera.A repertory theatre can be a theatre in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation....
 actor using the stage name David Baron. Beginning with his first play, The Room (1957), Pinter's writing career spanned over half a century and produced 29 stage plays; 26 screenplays; many dramatic sketches, radio and TV plays; poetry; one novel; short fiction; and essays, speeches, and letters—many of whose manuscripts are owned and catalogued by the British Library
British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is based in London and is one of the world's largest List of Research libraries, holding over 150 million items in all known languages and formats; books, journals, newspapers, magazines, Sound recording, patents, databases, maps, stamps, Printmaking, drawings and much mor...
. His best-known works include The Birthday Party
The Birthday Party (play)

The Birthday Party is the first full-length play by Harold Pinter and one of Pinter's best-known and most-frequently performed plays. After its hostile London reception almost ended Pinter's playwriting career, it went on to be considered "a classic"....
 (1957), The Caretaker
The Caretaker

The Caretaker is a play by the List_of_Nobel_laureates#Literature Harold Pinter, first published in 1959. It was Pinter?s sixth stage/TV play and was the work that gave him his first significant commercial success....
 (1959), The Homecoming
The Homecoming

The Homecoming is a two-act award-winning play written in 1964 by Nobel Prize in Literature, Harold Pinter. First published in 1965, the original Broadway theatre production won the 1967 21st Tony Awards and its 40th-anniversary Broadway production at the Cort Theatre was nominated for a 2008 62nd Tony Awards for "Best Revival of a Play"....
 (1964), and Betrayal
Betrayal (play)

Betrayal is a play written by 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature English playwright Harold Pinter in 1978. Critically regarded as one of his major Drama, it features his characteristically economical dialogue, characters' hidden emotions and veiled motivations, and their self-absorbed competitive one-upmanship, face-saving, dishonesty, and...
 (1978), each of which he adapted to film, and his screenplay adaptations of others' works, such as The Servant (1963), The Go-Between
The Go-Between (film)

The Go-Between is a 1970 in film United Kingdom film adaptation of the The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley directed by Joseph Losey and starring Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Margaret Leighton, Michael Redgrave, and Edward Fox , among others....
 (1970), The French Lieutenant's Woman
The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)

The French Lieutenant's Woman is a 1981 in film film directed by Karel Reisz and adapted by playwright Harold Pinter. It is based on the The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles....
 (1981), The Trial
The Trial (1993 film)

The Trial is a 1993 in film film made by the British Broadcasting Corporation based on Harold Pinter's screenplay adaptation of Franz Kafka's novel The Trial....
 (1993), and Sleuth
Sleuth (2007 film)

Sleuth is a 2007 in film film directed by Kenneth Branagh based on Harold Pinter's screenplay adaptation of the Tony Award-winning play Sleuth , by Anthony Shaffer and starring Jude Law as Milo Tindle and Michael Caine as Andrew Wyke....
 (2007). He directed almost 50 stage, television, and film productions. Despite frail health since being diagnosed with oesophageal cancer
Esophageal cancer

Esophageal cancer is cancer of the esophagus. There are various subtypes, primarily squamous cell cancer and adenocarcinoma. Squamous cell cancer arises from the cells that line the upper part of the esophagus....
 late in 2001, he continued to act on stage and screen, performing the title role in a critically-acclaimed production of Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish people writer, dramatist and poet. Beckett's work offers a bleak outlook on human culture and both formally and philosophically became increasingly minimalism....
's one-act monologue Krapp's Last Tape
Krapp's Last Tape

Krapp's Last Tape is a one-act Play , written in English, by Samuel Beckett. Consisting of a cast of one man, it was originally written for Northern Ireland actor Patrick Magee and first titled "Magee monologue"....
 for the 50th anniversary season of the Royal Court Theatre
Royal Court Theatre

The Royal Court Theatre is a West End Theatre#London's non-commercial theatres theatre on Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea....
, in October 2006.

Pinter's dramas often involve strong conflicts among ambivalent characters who struggle for verbal and territorial dominance and for their own versions of the past; stylistically, these works are marked by theatrical pauses and silences, comedic timing, irony, and menace. Thematically ambiguous, they raise complex issues of individual identity oppressed by social forces, language, and vicissitudes of memory. Although Pinter publicly eschewed applying the term "political theatre
Political theatre

In the history of theatre, there is long tradition of performances addressing issues of current events and central to society itself, encouraging consciousness and social change....
" to his own work in 1981, he began writing overtly political plays in the mid-1980s, reflecting his own heightening political interests and changes in his personal life. This "new direction" in his work and his left-wing
Left-wing politics

In politics, left-wing, leftist, and the Left are terms applied to Social progressivism and Egalitarianism positions. Originally, during the French Revolution, left-wing referred to seating arrangements in parliament; those who sat on the left opposed the monarchy and supported Political radicalism reform....
 political activism stimulated additional critical debate about Pinter's politics. Pinter, his work, and his politics have been the subject of voluminous critical commentary.

In addition to the Nobel Prize in Literature and the French Légion d'honneur
Légion d'honneur

The L?gion d'honneur or Ordre national de la L?gion d'honneur is a France order established by Napoleon I of France, First Consul of the French First Republic, on May 19, 1802....
, Pinter received 20 honorary degree
Honorary degree

An honorary degree or a degree honoris causa is an academic degree for which a university has waived the usual requirements . The degree itself is typically a doctorate or, less commonly, a master's degree, and may be awarded to someone who has no prior connection with the institution in question....
s and numerous other prizes and awards. Academic institutions and performing arts organizations have devoted symposia, festivals, and celebrations to him and his work, in recognition of his cultural influence and achievements across genres and media. In awarding Pinter's Nobel Prize, instigating some public controversy and criticism, the Swedish Academy
Swedish Academy

The Swedish Academy , founded in 1786 by King Gustav III of Sweden, is one of the Swedish Royal Academies of Sweden. Modelled after the Acad?mie fran?aise, it has 18 members....
 cited him for being "generally regarded as the foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the 20th century" and noted: "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
Characteristics of Harold Pinter's work

Characteristics of Harold Pinter's work describes prominent features of the works of British playwright, screenwriter, poet, and author of speeches and essays Harold Pinter and illustrates his influence on Anglo-American popular culture....
' "—a word he detested and found meaningless. Two weeks after withdrawing from the honorary degree ceremony at the Central School of Speech and Drama
Central School of Speech and Drama

The Central School of Speech and Drama was founded in 1906 by Elsie Fogerty to offer a new form of training in speech and drama for young actors and other students....
 due to illness and receiving it in absentia, he died from cancer and was buried the following week at Kensal Green Cemetery
Kensal Green Cemetery

Kensal Green Cemetery is a burial ground located in Kensal Green, London, England. It was immortalised in the lines of GK Chesterton "For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen; Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green"....
, in North West London
North West London

North West London is the area of Greater London to the North West of Central London . Although it is only ambiguously defined, it is the most wealthy and also the most commercially developed area of London outside of the centre, containing significant amounts of commercial & retail spacealong with other cities, such as Watford, Camden, Harrow...
.

Biography


Personal background

Pinter was born on 10 October 1930, in Hackney
Metropolitan Borough of Hackney

The Metropolitan Borough of Hackney was a metropolitan borough of the County of London from 1900 to 1965. Its area became part of the London Borough of Hackney....
, East London, to "very respectable, Jew
Jew

A Jew is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group that traces its ancestry to the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East....
ish, lower middle class
Middle class

Middle class is the group of people in contemporary society who are between the working class and nobility. This socioeconomic class includes professionals, highly skilled workers, and lower and middle management....
," native English parents of Eastern-European
Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is a term that applies to the geopolitical region encompassing the easternmost part of the Europe. Throughout history and to a lesser extent today, parts of Eastern Europe has been distinguishable from Western Europe and other regions due to cultural, religious, economic, and historical reasons, even though there i...
 ancestry; his father, Jack Pinter (1902–1997), was a "ladies' tailor" and his mother, Frances (née Moskowitz; 1904–1992), "kept what is called an immaculate house" and was "a wonderful cook." Correcting general knowledge about Pinter's family background, Michael Billington
Michael Billington (critic)

Michael Keith Billington is a United Kingdom author and arts critic. Theatre#Drama critic of The Guardian since October 1971, he is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and the arts; most notably, he is the authorised official biographer of 2005 Nobel...
, Pinter's authorised biographer, documents that "three of Pinter's grandparents hail from Poland and one from Odessa
Odessa

Odessa or Odesa is the Capital of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major port located on the shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 ....
, making them Ashkenazic rather than Sephardic Jews" (Harold Pinter 1–5). His evacuation
Evacuations of civilians in Britain during World War II

Evacuations of civilians in Britain during World War II were designed to save the population of urban or military areas from Nazi German aerial bombing of cities and military targets such as docks....
 from the family home at 19 Thistlewaite Road, "a solid, red-brick, three-storey villa just off the noisy, bustling, traffic-ridden thoroughfare of the Lower Clapton
Lower Clapton

Lower Clapton is a district within the London Borough of Hackney.It is immediately adjacent to central Hackney - bounded, roughly, by the western side of Hackney Downs , the Lea Valley , Clifden Road and the Lea Bridge Road ....
 Road" (2), to Cornwall
Cornwall

Cornwall , constitutional Duchy and palatine, is a metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties of England of England, United Kingdom, located at the tip of the south-western peninsula of Great Britain....
 and Reading
Reading, Berkshire

Reading is a town in England, located at the confluence of the River Thames and River Kennet, midway between London and Swindon off the M4 motorway....
 during 1940 and 1941, before and during the Blitz
The Blitz

The Blitz was the sustained bombing of United Kingdom by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, in World War II. While the "Blitz" hit many towns and cities across the country, it began with the bombing of London for 57 consecutive nights ....
, and facing "the life-and-death intensity of daily experience" at that time influenced him profoundly, with Pinter's "prime memories of evacuation" being "of loneliness, bewilderment, separation and loss: themes that are in all his works" (5–10).

Education

Although he was a "solitary" only child, he "discovered his true potential" as a student at Hackney Downs School
Hackney Downs School

Hackney Downs School, was a Comprehensive school secondary school, located near Hackney Downs in the London Borough of Hackney....
, the London grammar school
Grammar school

A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries....
 "where Pinter spent the formative years from 1944 to 1948. … Partly through the school and partly through the social life of Hackney Boys' Club … he formed an almost sacerdotal belief in the power of male friendship. The friends he made in those days—most particularly Henry Woolf
Henry Woolf

Henry Woolf is a United Kingdom actor, theatre director, and teacher of acting, drama, and theatre who lives in Canada, and a longtime friend and collaborator of 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter, having stimulated Pinter to write his first play, The Room in 1956....
, Michael (Mick) Goldstein and Morris (Moishe) Wernick—have always been a vital part of the emotional texture of his life" (Billington, Harold Pinter 11; cf.
Cf.

Cf. is an abbreviation for the Latin-derived word confer, meaning "compare" or "consult", and is hence used to refer to other material or ideas which may provide auxiliary information or arguments....
 Woolf). Significantly "inspired" by his English teacher, mentor, and friend Joseph Brearley, "Pinter shone at English, wrote for the school magazine and discovered a gift for acting" (Billington, Harold Pinter 10–11). He wrote poetry frequently and published some of it as a teenager, as he has continued to do throughout his career. He played Romeo
Romeo Montague

Romeo Montague is one of the fictional protagonists in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. He is the heir of the Montague family of Verona, and falls in love and dies with Juliet Capulet, the daughter of the Capulet house....
 and Macbeth
Macbeth (character)

Macbeth is the main character in Shakespeare?s Macbeth . The character was based upon accounts found in Holinshed's Chronicles , a history of Britain....
 in 1947 and 1948, in productions directed by Brearley (Billington, Harold Pinter 13–14). He especially enjoyed running and broke the Hackney Downs School sprinting record (Gussow, Conversations with Pinter 28–29).

Sport and friendship

Pinter was an avid cricket
Cricket

Cricket is a Bat-and-ball games team sport that originated in southern England. The earliest definite reference is dated 1598, and it is now played in more than 100 countries....
 enthusiast most of his life, taking his cricket bat with him when he was evacuated as a pre-teenager during the Blitz (Billington, Life and Work 7–9; 410). In 1971 he told Gussow: "one of my main obsessions in life is the game of cricket—I play and watch and read about it all the time" (Conversations with Pinter 25). Being Chairman of the Gaieties Cricket Club and a "lifetime support[er] of the Yorkshire Cricket Club
Yorkshire County Cricket Club

Yorkshire County Cricket Club, who represent the historic counties of England of Yorkshire, are one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English domestic cricket structure....
 (8), Pinter devoted a section of his official website to "Cricket" ("Gaieties Cricket Club"). One wall of his study is dominated by "A huge portrait of a younger, vigorous Mr. Pinter playing cricket, one of his great passions … The painted Mr. Pinter, poised to swing his bat, has a wicked glint in his eye; testosterone all but flies off the canvas" (Lyall, "Still Pinteresque" 16 [illus.]). As Billington documents, "Robert Winder
Robert Winder

Robert Winder, formerly Literary Editor of The Independent for five years and Deputy Editor of Granta magazine during the late 1990s, is the author of Hell for Leather, a book about modern cricket, a book about British immigration, and also two novels as well as many articles and book reviews in British periodicals....
 observes how even Pinter's passion for cricket was far removed from a jocular, country-house pursuit: 'Harold stands for a different tradition, a more urban and exacting idea of cricket as a bold theatre of aggression' " (Harold Pinter 410). His last interview, conducted by Andy Bull, of the Guardian, two months before Pinter's death and published a few days after it, was "on a subject very dear to the playwright's heart: cricket," revealing "his childhood love of cricket and why it is better than sex."

Other main loves or interests that he mentioned to Gussow, Billington, and other interviewers (in varying order of priority) are family, love (of women) and sex, drinking, writing, and reading. According to Billington, "If the notion of male loyalty, competitive rivalry and fear of betrayal forms a constant thread in Pinter's work from The Dwarfs onwards, its origins can be found in his teenage Hackney years. Pinter adores women, enjoys flirting with them, worships their resilience and strength. But, in his early work especially, they are often seen as disruptive influences on some pure, Platonic ideal of male friendship
Platonic love

Platonic love is a deep and spiritual connection between two individuals: within such a relationship there does not exist any form of sexual connection or sexual elements....
: one of the most crucial of all Pinter's lost Edens
Garden of Eden

The Garden of Eden is a location described in the Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam , and his wife, Eve , lived after they were created by God....
" (Harold Pinter 10–12).

Early theatrical training and stage experience

Beginning in late 1948, Pinter attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art

The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art , in Bloomsbury, London, is generally regarded as one of the most renowned drama schools in the world, and is one of the oldest drama schools in Britain....
 (RADA) for two terms, but "loathing" RADA, he missed most of his classes, feigned a nervous breakdown, and dropped out in 1949. That year he was also "called up for National Service
National service

National service is a common name for mandatory or voluntary government service programs . National service was common in the 20th century, and many young people spent one or more years in such programs....
," registered as a conscientious objector
Conscientious objector

A conscientious objector is an individual who, on religious, moral or ethical grounds, refuses to participate as a combatant in war or, in some cases, to take any role that would support a combatant organization armed forces....
, was brought to trial twice, and ultimately fined by the magistrate for refusing to serve (Billington, Harold Pinter 20–25).

He had a "walk-on" role in Dick Whittington and His Cat
Dick Whittington and His Cat

Dick Whittington and His Cat is a British folklore that has often been adapted for stage pantomimes and other adaptations. It tells of a poor boy in the 14th century who becomes a wealthy merchant and eventually the Lord Mayor of London because of the ratting abilities of his cat....
 at the Chesterfield Hippodrome in 1949 to 1950. From January to July 1951, he "endured six months at the Central School of Speech and Drama
Central School of Speech and Drama

The Central School of Speech and Drama was founded in 1906 by Elsie Fogerty to offer a new form of training in speech and drama for young actors and other students....
." From 1951 to 1952, he toured Ireland with the Anew McMaster repertory company, playing over a dozen roles. In 1952 he began regional repertory acting jobs in England; from 1953 to 1954, he worked for the Donald Wolfit
Donald Wolfit

Sir Donald Wolfit, Order of the British Empire was an England actor-manager, knighted in 1957 for his services to the theatre.Wolfit, who was "Woolfitt" at birth, was born in Newark, England, and attended the Magnus Grammar School and made his stage d?but in 1920....
 Company, King's Theatre, Hammersmith
Hammersmith

Hammersmith is an urban centre in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in west London, approximately 5 miles west of Charing Cross on the north bank of the River Thames....
, performing eight roles. From 1954 until 1959, Pinter acted under the stage name David Baron. As Batty observes: "Following his brief stint with Wolfit's company in 1953, this was to be Pinter's daily life for five years, and his prime manner of earning a living alongside stints as a waiter, a postman, a bouncer and snow-clearer whilst all the time harbouring ambitions as a poet and writer" (About Pinter 10).

In Pinter: The Player's Playwright, David Thompson "itemises all the performances Pinter gave in the [David] Baron years," including those in English regional repertory companies, nearly twenty-five roles. In October 1989, Pinter told Mel Gussow
Mel Gussow

Melvyn H. Gussow was an influential USA theater critic who wrote for The New York Times for 35 years.Born in New York City to parents Donald and Betty Gussow, the elder of two sons, Gussow was of Lithuanian descent, grew up in Rockville Centre, New York, located in the Town of Hempstead , New York, Long Island, New York; his younger b...
: "I was in English rep as an actor for about 12 years. My favourite roles were undoubtedly the sinister ones. They're something to get your teeth into" (Conversations with Pinter 83). During that period, he also performed occasional roles in his own and others' works (for radio, TV, and film), as he did later as well.

Marriage and family life

From 1956 until 1980, Pinter was married to Vivien Merchant
Vivien Merchant

Vivien Merchant was a United Kingdom actress, who was born Ada Thompson. She performed in many stage productions and films, including Alfie and Frenzy ....
, a rep
Repertory

Repertory or rep, called stock in the US, is a term used in Western theatre and opera.A repertory theatre can be a theatre in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation....
 actress whom he met on tour, probably best known for her performance in the original film Alfie (1966); their son, Daniel, was born in 1958 (Billington, Harold Pinter 54, 75). Through the early 1970s, Merchant appeared in many of Pinter's works, most notably The Homecoming
The Homecoming

The Homecoming is a two-act award-winning play written in 1964 by Nobel Prize in Literature, Harold Pinter. First published in 1965, the original Broadway theatre production won the 1967 21st Tony Awards and its 40th-anniversary Broadway production at the Cort Theatre was nominated for a 2008 62nd Tony Awards for "Best Revival of a Play"....
 on stage (1965) and screen (1973), but the marriage was turbulent and began disintegrating in the mid-1960s (252–56). For seven years, from 1962 to 1969, Pinter was engaged in a clandestine affair with Joan Bakewell
Joan Bakewell

Dame Joan Dawson Bakewell Order of the British Empire is an England journalist and television presenter....
, which inspired his play Betrayal
Betrayal (play)

Betrayal is a play written by 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature English playwright Harold Pinter in 1978. Critically regarded as one of his major Drama, it features his characteristically economical dialogue, characters' hidden emotions and veiled motivations, and their self-absorbed competitive one-upmanship, face-saving, dishonesty, and...
 (1978) (264–66).

In January 1975, he became romantically involved with historian Lady Antonia Fraser
Antonia Fraser

Lady Antonia Fraser, Order of British Empire , n?e Pakenham, is an English author of history and novels, best known as Antonia Fraser for writing biography and detective fiction....
, wife of Sir Hugh Fraser
Hugh Fraser (politician)

Major Sir Hugh Charles Patrick Joseph Fraser Order of the British Empire was a British Conservative Party politician and first husband of the author Lady Antonia Fraser....
, confessing their affair to Vivien Merchant "in late March" and then, after "Life in Hanover Terrace [with Merchant] gradually became impossible," moving out of their house on 28 April 1975, five days into Peter Hall's premiere of No Man's Land
No Man's Land (play)

No Man's Land is a Play by 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter written in 1974 and first produced and published in 1975....
; several months after he had already moved in with Lady Antonia and after "threatening all summer to sue Pinter for divorce, publicly citing Antonia if he did not return to her," on 27 July 1975, Merchant finally filed for divorce, resulting in "press fascination" with their break up (Billington, Harold Pinter 253–54; "People"). At first, Daniel lived with him, for "According to Pinter, Vivien couldn't cope with bringing up Daniel alone" (253). From temporary borrowed and rented quarters, Pinter and Antonia Fraser eventually "moved back into her Holland Park family home in August 1977" (254–55). After the Frasers' divorce had become final in 1977 and the Pinters' in 1980, in the third week of October 1980, Pinter married Antonia Fraser; however, due to a two-week delay in Merchant's signing the divorce papers, the reception had to precede the actual ceremony, originally scheduled "to coincide with Pinter's fiftieth birthday" on 10 October 1980 (271–72).

Unable to overcome her bitterness and grief at the loss of her husband, Vivien Merchant died of acute alcoholism in the first week of October 1982 at the age of 53 (Billington, Harold Pinter 276). According to Billington, who cites Merchant's close friends and Pinter's associates, Pinter "did everything possible to support" her until her death and regrets that he ultimately became estranged from their son, Daniel, after their separation, Pinter's remarriage, and Merchant's death (276, 345–47). A reclusive gifted musician and writer (345), Daniel stopped using the surname Pinter, having adopted instead "his maternal grandmother's maiden name," Brand, at the time that he was living with Pinter and Fraser in the summer of 1975; according to Billington, Pinter did not regard Daniel's change of name as "a symbolic rejection of himself" but rather as "a largely pragmatic move on Daniel's part designed to keep the press, who [at that time] had been relentlessly hounding him also, at bay" (255).

While Billington observes that "The break-up with Vivien and the new life with Antonia was to have a profound effect on Pinter's personality and his work," he also acknowledges that she herself "is quick to qualify the idea that she had any direct input into his plays and points out that other people [such as Pinter's good friend actress Peggy Ashcroft
Peggy Ashcroft

Dame Peggy Ashcroft Order of the British Empire was an English actress....
, among others] had a shaping influence on his politics," attributing later changes in his writing and his "engagement with the public world" to the "drastic change" from "an unhappy, complicated personal life … to a happy, uncomplicated personal life," so that "a side of Harold which had always been there was somehow released. I think you can see that in his work after No Man's Land
No Man's Land (play)

No Man's Land is a Play by 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter written in 1974 and first produced and published in 1975....
 [1975,] which was a very bleak play" (255).

Pinter stated publicly in interviews that he was "very happy" in his second marriage and enjoyed family life with his six adult stepchildren and 17 step-grandchildren, and, after battling cancer for a long period, considered himself "a very lucky man in every respect." According to Lyall, who interviewed him in London for her Sunday New York Times
The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper published in New York City. The largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States, "The Gray Lady"?named for its staid appearance and style?is regarded as a national newspaper of record....
 preview of Sleuth
Sleuth (2007 film)

Sleuth is a 2007 in film film directed by Kenneth Branagh based on Harold Pinter's screenplay adaptation of the Tony Award-winning play Sleuth , by Anthony Shaffer and starring Jude Law as Milo Tindle and Michael Caine as Andrew Wyke....
, Pinter's "latest work, a slim pamphlet called 'Six Poems for A.,' comprises poems written over 32 years, with 'A' being Lady Antonia. The first of the poems was written in Paris, where she and Pinter travelled soon after they met. More than three decades later the two were rarely apart, and Mr. Pinter turned soft, even cozy, when he talked about his wife" ("Still Pinteresque" 16). In the interview conducted by Lyall, Pinter "acknowledged that his plays––full of infidelity, cruelty, inhumanity, the lot––seem at odds with his domestic contentment. 'How can you write a happy play?' he said. 'Drama is about conflict and degrees of perturbation, disarray. I've never been able to write a happy play, but I've been able to enjoy a happy life' " ("Still Pinteresque" 16).

Career

Pinter was the author of 29 plays, 15 dramatic sketches, 26 screenplays and film scripts for cinema and television, a novel, and other prose fiction, essays, and speeches, many poems, and co-author of two works for stage and radio. Along with the 1967 Tony Award for Best Play
Tony Award for Best Play

The Tony Award is an annual award celebrating achievements in live United States theatre, including musical theatre, honoring productions on Broadway theatre in New York....
 for The Homecoming
The Homecoming

The Homecoming is a two-act award-winning play written in 1964 by Nobel Prize in Literature, Harold Pinter. First published in 1965, the original Broadway theatre production won the 1967 21st Tony Awards and its 40th-anniversary Broadway production at the Cort Theatre was nominated for a 2008 62nd Tony Awards for "Best Revival of a Play"....
 and several other American awards and award nominations, he and his plays received many awards in the UK and elsewhere throughout the world. His screenplays for The French Lieutenant's Woman
The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)

The French Lieutenant's Woman is a 1981 in film film directed by Karel Reisz and adapted by playwright Harold Pinter. It is based on the The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles....
 and Betrayal
Betrayal (play)

Betrayal is a play written by 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature English playwright Harold Pinter in 1978. Critically regarded as one of his major Drama, it features his characteristically economical dialogue, characters' hidden emotions and veiled motivations, and their self-absorbed competitive one-upmanship, face-saving, dishonesty, and...
 were nominated for Academy Awards
Academy Awards

The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers....
 in the category of "Writing: Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium" in 1981 and 1983, respectively.

1957–2001

The Room (1957) Pinter's first play, The Room, written in 1957, was a student production at the University of Bristol
University of Bristol

The University of Bristol is a university in Bristol, England. It received its Royal Charter in 1909, although its predecessor institution, University College, Bristol, had been in existence since 1876....
, "commissioned" and directed by his good friend (later acclaimed) actor Henry Woolf
Henry Woolf

Henry Woolf is a United Kingdom actor, theatre director, and teacher of acting, drama, and theatre who lives in Canada, and a longtime friend and collaborator of 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter, having stimulated Pinter to write his first play, The Room in 1956....
, who also originated the role of Mr. Kidd (which he reprised in 2001 and 2007). After Pinter had mentioned that he had an "idea" for a play, Woolf asked him to write it so that he could direct it as part of fulfilling requirements for his postgraduate work. Pinter wrote it in three days. To mark and celebrate the 50th anniversary of that first production of The Room, Woolf reprised his role of Mr. Kidd, as well as his role of the Man in Pinter's play Monologue, in April 2007, as part of an international conference at the University of Leeds
University of Leeds

The University of Leeds is a major teaching and research university in Leeds, West Yorkshire and, with over 33,000 full-time students, one of the largest universities in the United Kingdom....
, Artist and Citizen: 50 Years of Performing Pinter
Harold Pinter and academia

Harold Pinter and academia concerns academia recognition of and scholarship pertaining to 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter, Companion of Honour, Order of the British Empire, the English people playwright, screenwriter, actor, director, poet, and political activist, who became president of the Central School of Speech and Drama, a...
.

"Comedies of menace" The Birthday Party
The Birthday Party (play)

The Birthday Party is the first full-length play by Harold Pinter and one of Pinter's best-known and most-frequently performed plays. After its hostile London reception almost ended Pinter's playwriting career, it went on to be considered "a classic"....
 (1957), Pinter's second play and among his best-known, was initially both a commercial and critical disaster, despite a rave review in the Sunday Times
The Sunday Times

The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times ...
 by its influential drama critic Harold Hobson
Harold Hobson

Sir Harold Hobson was an influential England drama critic and author.He was born in Thorpe Hesley near Rotherham in South Yorkshire, England and read History at University of Oxford....
, which appeared only after the production had closed and could not be reprieved (Hobson, "The Screw Turns Again"). Critical accounts often quote Hobson's prophetic words: Hobson was generally credited by Pinter himself and other critics as bolstering him and perhaps even rescuing his career (Billington, Harold Pinter 85); for example, in their September 1993 interview, Pinter told the New York Times
The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper published in New York City. The largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States, "The Gray Lady"?named for its staid appearance and style?is regarded as a national newspaper of record....
 critic Mel Gussow
Mel Gussow

Melvyn H. Gussow was an influential USA theater critic who wrote for The New York Times for 35 years.Born in New York City to parents Donald and Betty Gussow, the elder of two sons, Gussow was of Lithuanian descent, grew up in Rockville Centre, New York, located in the Town of Hempstead , New York, Long Island, New York; his younger b...
: "I felt pretty discouraged before Hobson. He had a tremendous influence on my life" (141).

In a review published in 1958, borrowing from the subtitle of The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace, a play by David Campton
David Campton

David Campton was a prolific United Kingdom dramatist who wrote plays for the stage, radio, and cinema for thirty-five years. "He was one of the first British dramatists to write in the style of the Theatre of the Absurd"....
 (1924–2006), critic Irving Wardle
Irving Wardle

John Irving Wardle is a writer and theatre critic.His father, John Wardle, was drama critic on the Bolton Evening News, and a regular performer at the Bolton Little Theatre....
 called Pinter's early plays "comedy of menace
Comedy of menace

Comedy of menace is a term used to describe the plays of David Campton, Nigel Dennis, N. F. Simpson, and Harold Pinter by drama critic Irving Wardle, borrowed from the subtitle of Campton's play The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace, in reviewing Pinter's and Campton's plays in Encore in 1958....
"—a label that people have applied repeatedly to his work, at times "pigeonholing" and attempting to "tame" it. Such plays begin with an apparently innocent situation that becomes both threatening and "absurd
Absurdism

Absurdism is a philosophy stating that the efforts of human race to find meaning in the universe ultimately fail , because no such meaning exists, at least in relation to humanity....
" as Pinter's characters behave in ways often perceived as inexplicable by his audiences and one another. Pinter acknowledges the influence of Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish people writer, dramatist and poet. Beckett's work offers a bleak outlook on human culture and both formally and philosophically became increasingly minimalism....
, particularly on his early work; they became friends), sending each other drafts of their works in progress for comments.

In 1964, four years after the success of The Caretaker
The Caretaker

The Caretaker is a play by the List_of_Nobel_laureates#Literature Harold Pinter, first published in 1959. It was Pinter?s sixth stage/TV play and was the work that gave him his first significant commercial success....
 in 1960, which established Pinter's theatrical reputation (Jones), The Birthday Party was revived both on television (with Pinter himself in the role of Goldberg) and on stage (directed by Pinter at the Aldwych
Aldwych Theatre

The Aldwych Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Aldwych in the City of Westminster. The theatre was listed building on 20 July 1971 Its seating capacity is 1,200....
) and well received (Merritt, Pinter in Play 18, 219–20). By the time Peter Hall's London production of The Homecoming
The Homecoming

The Homecoming is a two-act award-winning play written in 1964 by Nobel Prize in Literature, Harold Pinter. First published in 1965, the original Broadway theatre production won the 1967 21st Tony Awards and its 40th-anniversary Broadway production at the Cort Theatre was nominated for a 2008 62nd Tony Awards for "Best Revival of a Play"....
 (1964) reached Broadway (1967), Harold Pinter had become a celebrity playwright, and the play garnered four Tony award
Tony Award

The Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as the Tony Awards, recognize achievement in live United States theatre and are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City....
s, among other awards ("Harold Pinter" at the Internet Broadway Database
Internet Broadway Database

The Internet Broadway Database is an online database of Broadway theatre productions and their personnel. It is operated by the Research Department of The Broadway League, a trade association for the North American commercial theatre community....
).

"Memory plays" From the late sixties through the early eighties, Pinter wrote Landscape
Landscape (play)

Landscape is a one act play by Harold Pinter first performed in 1968.The play shows the difficulties of communication between two people in a marriage....
 (1968), Silence
Silence (play)

Silence is a short play by Harold Pinter first performed in 1969....
 (1969), "Night" (1969), Old Times
Old Times

Old Times is a play by the List of Nobel laureates#Literature Harold Pinter. It was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre in London on June 1, 1971....
 (1971), No Man's Land
No Man's Land (play)

No Man's Land is a Play by 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter written in 1974 and first produced and published in 1975....
 (1975), The Proust Screenplay (1977), Betrayal
Betrayal (play)

Betrayal is a play written by 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature English playwright Harold Pinter in 1978. Critically regarded as one of his major Drama, it features his characteristically economical dialogue, characters' hidden emotions and veiled motivations, and their self-absorbed competitive one-upmanship, face-saving, dishonesty, and...
 (1978), Family Voices
Family Voices

Family Voices is a play by Harold Pinter. It was originally written in 1980 as a radio play and was first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on January 22, 1981....
 (1981), and A Kind of Alaska (1982), all of which dramatise complex ambiguities, elegiac mysteries, comic vagaries, and other "quicksand"-like characteristics of memory
Memory

In psychology, memory is an organism's mental ability to store, retain and recall information. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of mnemonic....
 and which critics sometimes categorise as Pinter's "memory plays".

Pinter's more-recent plays Party Time (1991), Moonlight
Moonlight (play)

Moonlight is a Play written by 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter, which premiered at the Almeida Theatre, in London, in September 1993....
 (1993), Ashes to Ashes
Ashes to Ashes (play)

Ashes to Ashes is a 1996 play by English people playwright Harold Pinter. It was first performed, in Dutch, by Toneelgroep Amsterdam, the Netherlands' largest repertory company, in Amsterdam, as part of its 1996?1997 season, and directed by Titus Muizelaar, who reprised his production, in Dutch with English surtitles, as part of a double...
 (1996), and Celebration
Celebration (play)

Celebration is a Play by United Kingdom playwright Harold Pinter. It was first presented as a double-bill with Pinter's first play The Room on Thursday 16 March 2000 at the Almeida Theatre in London ....
 (2000) draw upon some features of his "memory" dramaturgy
Dramaturgy

Dramaturgy is the art of dramatic composition and the representation of the main elements of drama on the stage. Some dramatists combine writing and dramaturgy when creating a drama....
 in their focus on the past in the present, but they have personal and political resonances and other tonal differences from these more-clearly-identifiable "memory plays".

Pinter as director Pinter began to direct more frequently during the 1970s, becoming an associate director of the National Theatre (NT)
Royal National Theatre

The Royal National Theatre, London, England, is generally known as the National Theatre and commonly as The National. It is located on the The South Bank in the London Borough of Lambeth, England, immediately east of the southern end of Waterloo Bridge....
 in 1973, and he directed almost 50 productions of his own and others' plays for stage, film, and television. As a director, Pinter helmed productions of work by Simon Gray
Simon Gray

Simon James Holliday Gray Order of the British Empire was a prolific postwar British playwright, whose work was performed worldwide.Simon Gray was born in Hayling Island, Hampshire, England....
 ten times, including directing the stage premières of Butley
Butley

Butley is a 1971 play by Simon Gray. The title character, a literary professor and T. S. Eliot scholar, is a suicide alcoholic who loses his wife and male lover on the same day....
 (1971), Otherwise Engaged
Otherwise Engaged

Otherwise Engaged is a bleakly comic play by English playwright Simon Gray. It opened at the Queen's Theatre in London on 10 July 1975, with Alan Bates as the star and Harold Pinter as director, produced by Michael Codron....
 (1975), The Rear Column (stage 1978; TV, 1980), Close of Play (NT, 1979), Quartermaine's Terms
Quartermaine's Terms

Quartermaine's Terms is a play by Simon Gray....
 (1981), Life Support (1997), The Late Middle Classes (1999), and The Old Masters
The Old Masters

The Old Masters is an album box set series by Frank Zappa. Originally five box sets were planned, but only three were issued. Contrary to the box set series' name, the sets featured remixes that were vastly different from the original albums ....
 (2004), and the film, Butley (1974), several of which starred Alan Bates
Alan Bates

Sir Alan Arthur Bates Order of British Empire was a United Kingdom actor of stage, screen and television....
 (1934–2003), who originated (on stage and screen) the role of Mick in Pinter's first commercial success, The Caretaker
The Caretaker

The Caretaker is a play by the List_of_Nobel_laureates#Literature Harold Pinter, first published in 1959. It was Pinter?s sixth stage/TV play and was the work that gave him his first significant commercial success....
 (1960), and played the roles of Nicolas in One for the Road and the cab driver in Victoria Station
Victoria Station (play)

Victoria Station is a short play for two actors by the England playwright Harold Pinter. It was first performed at the Royal National Theatre, London, on 14 October 1982....
 in Pinter's own double-bill production at the Lyric Hammersmith
Lyric Hammersmith

The Lyric Hammersmith is a theatre on King Street, in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, which takes pride in its original, "groundbreaking" productions....
 in 1984.

Pinter's overtly-political plays During the 1980s, after the three-year period of "creative blankness in the early 1980s" following his marriage to Lady Antonia Fraser and the death of Vivien Merchant, as mentioned by Billington (Harold Pinter 258), Pinter's plays tended to become shorter and more overtly political, serving as critiques of oppression
Oppression

Oppression is the use of social power to disempower, marginalize, silence or otherwise subordinate one social group or category, often in order to further empower and/or privilege the oppressor....
, torture
Torture

Torture, according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, is:In addition to state-sponsored torture, individuals or groups may be motivated to inflict torture on others for similar reasons to those of a state; however, the motive for torture can also be for the sadism gratification of the torturer, as was the case in the Moors M...
, and other abuses of human rights
Human rights

Human rights refer to the "basic rights and freedom to which all humans are entitled." Examples of rights and freedoms which have come to be commonly thought of as human rights include civil and political rights, such as the right to life and liberty, freedom of speech, and equality before the law; and social, cultural and economic rights, i...
, linked by the apparent "invulnerability of power" (Grimes 119). After writing the brief dramatic sketch Precisely (1983), a duologue between two bureaucrats exposing the absurd power politics of mutual nuclear annihilation and deterrence
Deterrence theory

Deterrence theory is a military strategy developed during the Cold War. It is especially relevant with regard to the use of nuclear weapons, and figures prominently in current United States foreign policy regarding the development of nuclear technology in North Korea and Iran....
, he wrote his first full-length overtly-political one-act play, One for the Road (1984). In a 1985 interview called "A Play and Its Politics", conducted by Nicholas Hern, published in the Grove Press
Grove Press

Grove Press is an United States of America publisher that was founded in 1951. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an influential Alternative media book press in the United States....
 edition of One for the Road, Pinter states that whereas his earlier plays presented "metaphors" for power and powerlessness (8–9), the later ones present literal "realities" of power and its abuse (16–17, 21). Grimes proposes, "If it is too much to say that Pinter faults himself for his earlier political inactivity, his political theater dramatizes the interplay and conflict of the opposing poles of involvement and disengagement" (19).

In the 1990s, he also wrote the political satire
Political satire

Political satire is a significant part of satire that specializes in gaining entertainment from politics; it has also been used with subversive intent where political speech and dissent are forbidden by a regime, as a method of advancing political arguments where such arguments are expressly forbidden....
 Party Time
Party Time

Party Time was an album by The Heptones and backing band called The Upsetters, released in 1977. Along with Junior Murvin's Police and Thieves and Max Romeo's War Ina Babylon, this album can be seen as part of a Black Ark Lee 'Scratch' Perry produced "holy trinity"....
, first as a play for the stage (Faber and Faber, 1991), and then revised and adapted it as a television screenplay (Faber and Faber, 1994). From 1992 to 1999, reflecting both personal and political concerns, Pinter wrote Moonlight
Moonlight (play)

Moonlight is a Play written by 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter, which premiered at the Almeida Theatre, in London, in September 1993....
 (1993) and Ashes to Ashes
Ashes to Ashes (play)

Ashes to Ashes is a 1996 play by English people playwright Harold Pinter. It was first performed, in Dutch, by Toneelgroep Amsterdam, the Netherlands' largest repertory company, in Amsterdam, as part of its 1996?1997 season, and directed by Titus Muizelaar, who reprised his production, in Dutch with English surtitles, as part of a double...
 (1996), full-length plays with domestic settings relating to death and dying and (in the latter case) to such atrocities as the Holocaust
The Holocaust

The Holocaust , also known as , Churben is the term generally used to describe the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, as part of a program of deliberate extermination planned and executed by Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler....
. In this period, after the deaths of first his mother and then his father, again merging the personal and the political, Pinter wrote the poems "Death" (1997) (which he read in his 2005 Nobel Lecture) and "The Disappeared" (1998).

Lincoln Center Harold Pinter Festival (Summer 2001) In July and August 2001, a Harold Pinter Festival celebrating his work curated by Michael Colgan
Michael Colgan (theatre director)

Michael Colgan is a film and television producer and is also the Artistic Director of the Gate Theatre.Born in Dublin in 1950, he was educated at Trinity College, where as a student, he became chairman of Trinity Players....
, artistic director of the Gate Theatre
Gate Theatre

The Gate Theatre, in Dublin, was founded in 1928 by Hilton Edwards and Miche?l MacLiammoir, initially using the Abbey Theatre's Peacock studio theatre space to stage important works by Europe and American dramatists....
, Dublin
Dublin

Dublin is both the largest city and capital of Republic of Ireland. It is located near the midpoint of Ireland's east coast, at the mouth of the River Liffey and at the centre of the Dublin Region....
, was held at Lincoln Center in New York City
New York City

The City of New York is the List of United States cities by population in the United States, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the List of urban areas by population....
, in which he participated as both a director (of a double bill pairing his newest play, Celebration
Celebration (play)

Celebration is a Play by United Kingdom playwright Harold Pinter. It was first presented as a double-bill with Pinter's first play The Room on Thursday 16 March 2000 at the Almeida Theatre in London ....
, with his first play, The Room) and an actor (as Nicolas in One for the Road).

Harold Pinter Homage at World Leaders (Autumn 2001) In October 2001, as part of the "Harold Pinter Homage
Homage

Homage is generally used in modern English language to mean any public show of respect to someone to whom one feels indebted. In this sense, a reference within a creative work to someone who greatly influenced the artist would be an homage....
" at the World Leaders Festival of Creative Genius, at Harbourfront Centre, in Toronto, following the reception and during the dinner honouring him, he presented a dramatic reading of Celebration
Celebration (play)

Celebration is a Play by United Kingdom playwright Harold Pinter. It was first presented as a double-bill with Pinter's first play The Room on Thursday 16 March 2000 at the Almeida Theatre in London ....
 (2000) and also participated in a public interview as part of the International Festival of Authors
Culture in Toronto

Toronto, Canada, is a city of many museums, theatres, Festival and sports. It is also one of the most ethnically diverse cities in Canada and the world....
.

Later that year, Pinter's collaboration with director Di Trevis resulted in their stage adaptation of his as-yet unfilmed 1972 work The Proust Screenplay, entitled Remembrance of Things Past
Remembrance of Things Past (play)

Remembrance of Things Past is the 2000 collaborative stage adaptation by Harold Pinter and director Di Trevis of Harold Pinter's as-yet unproduced The Proust Screenplay , a screen adaptation of In Search of Lost Time, the seven-volume novel by Marcel Proust....
 (both based on Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust

Valentin Louis Georges Eug?ne Marcel Proust was a France novelist, essayist and critic, best known as the author of In Search of Lost Time , a monumental work of twentieth-century fiction published in seven parts from 1913 to 1927....
's famous seven-volume novel In Search of Lost Time
In Search of Lost Time

In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past is a semi-autobiographical novel in heptalogy by Marcel Proust. His most prominent work, it is popularly known for its extended length and the notion of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the Madeleine "....
), being produced at the National Theatre
Royal National Theatre

The Royal National Theatre, London, England, is generally known as the National Theatre and commonly as The National. It is located on the The South Bank in the London Borough of Lambeth, England, immediately east of the southern end of Waterloo Bridge....
, in London. There was also a revival of The Caretaker
The Caretaker

The Caretaker is a play by the List_of_Nobel_laureates#Literature Harold Pinter, first published in 1959. It was Pinter?s sixth stage/TV play and was the work that gave him his first significant commercial success....
 in the West End
West End of London

The West End of London is an area of Central London, England, containing many of the city's major tourist attractions, businesses, headquarters and the commercial West End theatres....
.

2002–2008

Late in 2001, Pinter was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer
Esophageal cancer

Esophageal cancer is cancer of the esophagus. There are various subtypes, primarily squamous cell cancer and adenocarcinoma. Squamous cell cancer arises from the cells that line the upper part of the esophagus....
, for which, in 2002, he underwent what he described afterwards in published and broadcast interviews as a "successful" operation and chemotherapy
Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy, in its most general sense, refers to treatment of disease by chemicals that kill cells, specifically those of micro-organisms or cancer....
, thanking both his "brilliant surgeon" and his "brilliant wife" for their efforts on his behalf during that period. During the course of his treatment, he directed a production of his play No Man's Land
No Man's Land (play)

No Man's Land is a Play by 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter written in 1974 and first produced and published in 1975....
, wrote and performed in his new sketch "Press Conference" for a two-part otherwise-retrospective production of his dramatic sketches at the National Theatre
Royal National Theatre

The Royal National Theatre, London, England, is generally known as the National Theatre and commonly as The National. It is located on the The South Bank in the London Borough of Lambeth, England, immediately east of the southern end of Waterloo Bridge....
 (415–16), and was seen on television in America in the role of Vivian Bearing's father in the HBO television film
Wit (film)

Wit is a 2001 HBO television movie based on the 1998 play Wit by Margaret Edson. Directed by Mike Nichols, and with the screenplay adaptation by Nichols and Emma Thompson, the movie features Thompson in the lead role of Vivian Bearing....
 of Margaret Edson
Margaret Edson

Margaret Edson is an American playwright. Edson graduated with a B.A. in Renaissance History from Smith College, and received a master's in English literature from Georgetown University....
's Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is an United States award regarded as the highest national honor in newspaper journalism, literary achievements and musical composition....
-winning play Wit
Wit (play)

Wit is the first Play written by American playwright Margaret Edson. Edson used her work experience in a hospital as part of the inspiration for her play....
. Since then, having become increasingly "engaged" as "a citizen" (Merritt, Pinter in Play 179), Pinter continued to write and present politically-charged poetry, essays, speeches and two new screenplay adaptations of plays, based on Shakespeare's King Lear
King Lear

King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1603 and 1606, and is considered one of his greatest works....
 (completed in 2000 but unfilmed) and on Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth
Sleuth (play)

Sleuth is a 1970 play written by Anthony Shaffer. The play is set in the Wiltshire, England manor house of Andrew Wyke, an immensely successful mystery writer....
 (written in 2005, with revisions completed later for the 2007 film Sleuth
Sleuth (2007 film)

Sleuth is a 2007 in film film directed by Kenneth Branagh based on Harold Pinter's screenplay adaptation of the Tony Award-winning play Sleuth , by Anthony Shaffer and starring Jude Law as Milo Tindle and Michael Caine as Andrew Wyke....
). Pinter's most recent stage play, Celebration
Celebration (play)

Celebration is a Play by United Kingdom playwright Harold Pinter. It was first presented as a double-bill with Pinter's first play The Room on Thursday 16 March 2000 at the Almeida Theatre in London ....
 (2000), is a social satire
Satire

Satire is often strictly defined as a literary genre; although, in practice, it is also found in the graphic arts and performing arts. In satire, human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods, ideally with the intent to bring about improv...
, with fewer political resonances than such plays as One for the Road (1984), Mountain Language
Mountain Language

Mountain Language is a one-act play written by Harold Pinter, first published in the The Times Literary Supplement on 7?13 October 1988....
 (1988), Party Time (1991), and Ashes to Ashes
Ashes to Ashes (play)

Ashes to Ashes is a 1996 play by English people playwright Harold Pinter. It was first performed, in Dutch, by Toneelgroep Amsterdam, the Netherlands' largest repertory company, in Amsterdam, as part of its 1996?1997 season, and directed by Titus Muizelaar, who reprised his production, in Dutch with English surtitles, as part of a double...
 (1996), the last three of which extend expressionistic aspects of Pinter's "memory plays" (Billington, Harold Pinter; Grimes). His most recent dramatic work for radio, Voices (2005), a collaboration with composer James Clarke
James Clarke (composer)

James Clarke is an United Kingdom composer sometimes associated with the New Complexity school....
, adapting such selected works by Pinter to music, premièred on BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3

BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on European classical music, but jazz, world music, drama and the arts also feature....
 on his 75th birthday (10 October 2005), three days before the October 13th announcement that he had won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature (Billington, Harold Pinter 420).

PinterFest, Manitoba Theatre Centre, 9–25 January 2003 In 2003, the Manitoba Theatre Centre, in Manitoba
Manitoba

Manitoba is a prairie provinces in Canada, which has an area of 647,797 square kilometres and a population of 1,207,959 , with more than half located within the Winnipeg Capital Region ....
, Canada
Canada

Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean....
, held a nearly month-long PinterFest, in which "over a 130 performances" of a dozen of Pinter's plays were produced by a dozen different theatre companies.

Public announcement of "retirement" from playwriting (February 2005) On 28 February 2005, in an interview conducted by Mark Lawson
Mark Lawson

Mark Gerard Lawson is an English people journalist, broadcaster and author....
 on the BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4 is a domestic UK radio station that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history....
 programme Front Row
Front Row (radio)

Front Row is a radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. The BBC describes the programme as a "live magazine programme on the world of arts, literature, film, media and music." It is broadcast each week day between 7.15 and 7.45 and has a of highlights available for download....
, Pinter announced publicly that he would stop writing plays to dedicate himself to his political activism
Activism

Activism, in a general sense, can be described as intentional action to bring about social change or politics change. This action is in support of, or opposition to, one side of an often controversy argument....
 and writing poetry
Poetry

Poetry is a form of literature art in which language is used for its aesthetics and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning ....
: "I think I've written 29 plays. I think it's enough for me. I think I've found other forms now. My energies are going in different directions—over the last few years I've made a number of political speeches at various locations and ceremonies … I'm using a lot of energy more specifically about political states of affairs, which I think are very, very worrying as things stand."

In later interviews and correspondence, he vowed to " 'keep fighting' " politically, remaining committed to writing and publishing poetry (e.g., his poems "The Special Relationship", "Laughter", and "The Watcher") and to continuing political pressure against the "status quo," battling politically what he considered social injustice
Social injustice

Social Injustice is a concept relating to the perceived unfairness or justice of a society in its divisions of rewards and burdens. The concept is distinct from those of justice in law, which may or may not be considered moral in practice....
s. Personally, he was also battling post-oesophageal cancer bouts of ill health, including "a rare skin disease called pemphigus
Pemphigus

Pemphigus is a rare group of autoimmune blistering diseases that affect the skin and mucous membranes.In pemphigus, autoantibody form against desmoglein....
"—that "very, very mysterious skin condition which emanated from the Brazilian jungle", as he described it—and "a form of septicaemia which afflict[ed] his feet and [made] movement slow and laborious" (Billington, Harold Pinter 394). Yet, despite these afflictions, Pinter completed his screenplay for Sleuth
Sleuth (2007 film)

Sleuth is a 2007 in film film directed by Kenneth Branagh based on Harold Pinter's screenplay adaptation of the Tony Award-winning play Sleuth , by Anthony Shaffer and starring Jude Law as Milo Tindle and Michael Caine as Andrew Wyke....
 in 2005 (418–20).

Europe Theatre Prize (March 2006) In an interview of Pinter conducted as part of the Europe Theatre Prize ceremony in Turin, Italy, which was part of the cultural program of the XX Winter Olympic Games
2006 Winter Olympics

The 2006 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XX Olympic Winter Games, were a winter multi-sport event which was celebrated in Turin, Italy from February 10, 2006, through February 26, 2006....
, including an evening of dramatic readings curated by the Gate Theatre
Gate Theatre

The Gate Theatre, in Dublin, was founded in 1928 by Hilton Edwards and Miche?l MacLiammoir, initially using the Abbey Theatre's Peacock studio theatre space to stage important works by Europe and American dramatists....
's artistic director Michael Colgan
Michael Colgan (theatre director)

Michael Colgan is a film and television producer and is also the Artistic Director of the Gate Theatre.Born in Dublin in 1950, he was educated at Trinity College, where as a student, he became chairman of Trinity Players....
 (BWW News Desk), Billington
Michael Billington (critic)

Michael Keith Billington is a United Kingdom author and arts critic. Theatre#Drama critic of The Guardian since October 1971, he is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and the arts; most notably, he is the authorised official biographer of 2005 Nobel...
 asked Pinter, "Is the itch to put pen to paper still there?" He replied, "Yes. It's just a question of what the form is … I've been writing poetry since my youth and I'm sure I'll keep on writing it till I conk out. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I've written 29 damn plays. Isn't that enough?" (Billington, " 'I've written' "). In response, audience members shouted "in unison" a resounding No, urging him to keep writing (Merritt, "Europe Theatre Prize Celebration").

BAFTA Celebration (June 2006) In June 2006, prevailing over persistent health challenges, Pinter attended "a celebration of his work in cinema organised by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts
British Academy of Film and Television Arts

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is a British charity that hosts annual awards shows for excellence in film, television, television craft, video games and forms of animation....
," for which his friend and fellow playwright David Hare
David Hare (dramatist)

Sir David Hare is an English people playwright and Theatre director and film director....
 "organised a brilliant selection of film clips ... [saying] 'To jump back into the world of Pinter's movies ... is to remind yourself of a literate mainstream cinema, focused as much as Bergman
Ingmar Bergman

Ernst Ingmar Bergman was a Sweden director, writer and Film producer for film, stage and television. He depicted bleakness and despair as well as comedy and hope in his explorations of the human condition....
's is on the human face, in which tension is maintained by a carefully crafted mix of image and dialogue.' "

Interview on Newsnight (June 2006) Pinter occasionally left open the possibility that if a compelling dramatic "image" were to come to mind (though "not likely"), he would perhaps have pursued it. After making this point, with Rupert Graves
Rupert Graves

Rupert Graves is an England actor....
 in another location on screen, Pinter performed a dramatic reading of his "new work," Apart From That, at the end of the interview conducted by Wark, broadcast live on Newsnight
Newsnight

Newsnight is a BBC Television Current affairs programme noted for its in-depth analysis and often robust cross-examination of senior politicians....
 on 23 June 2006. This "very funny" dramatic sketch was inspired by Pinter's strong aversion to mobile telephones
Mobile phone

A mobile phone is a long-range, electronic device used for mobile voice or data communication over a network of specialized base stations known as cell sites....
; "as two people trade banalities over their mobile phones there is a hint of something ominous and unspoken behind the clichéd chat" (Billington, Harold Pinter 429).

Krapp's Last Tape (October 2006) In an account of Pinter's interview conducted by Ramona Koval
Ramona Koval

Ramona Koval is an Australian broadcaster, writer and journalist.Koval is known for her extended and in-depth interviews with significant writers....
 at the Edinburgh Book Festival "Meet the Author" in late August 2006, Robinson reports: "Pinter, whose last published play came out in 2000, said the reason he had given up writing was that he had 'written himself out', adding: 'I recently had a holiday in Dorset
Dorset

Dorset , is a Counties of England in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester, Dorset, situated in the south of the county at ....
 and took a couple of my usual yellow writing pads. I didn't write a damn word. Fondly, I turned them over and put them in a drawer.' " It appeared to Robinson that "despite giving up writing [Pinter] will carry on his acting career." From another perspective, however, as Eden and Walker observe: "So keenly is Harold Pinter relishing his return to the stage this autumn [in Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish people writer, dramatist and poet. Beckett's work offers a bleak outlook on human culture and both formally and philosophically became increasingly minimalism....
's one-act monologue
Monologue

A monologue is an extended uninterrupted Oratory or poem by a single person. The person may be speaking his or her thoughts aloud or directly addressing other people, e.g....
 Krapp's Last Tape
Krapp's Last Tape

Krapp's Last Tape is a one-act Play , written in English, by Samuel Beckett. Consisting of a cast of one man, it was originally written for Northern Ireland actor Patrick Magee and first titled "Magee monologue"....
] that he has put his literary career on the back burner." Pinter said: "It's a great challenge and I'm going to have a crack at it."

After returning to London from Edinburgh, in September 2006, he began rehearsing for his performance of the role of Krapp
Krapp's Last Tape

Krapp's Last Tape is a one-act Play , written in English, by Samuel Beckett. Consisting of a cast of one man, it was originally written for Northern Ireland actor Patrick Magee and first titled "Magee monologue"....
, which, the next month, he performed from a motorized wheelchair in a limited run at the Royal Court Theatre
Royal Court Theatre

The Royal Court Theatre is a West End Theatre#London's non-commercial theatres theatre on Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea....
 to sold-out audiences and "ecstatic" critical reviews.

The production of only nine performances, from 12 October, two days after Pinter's 76th birthday, to 24 October 2006, was the most sought-after ticket in London during the 50th-anniversary celebration season of the Royal Court Theatre
Royal Court Theatre

The Royal Court Theatre is a West End Theatre#London's non-commercial theatres theatre on Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea....
; his performances sold out within minutes on the first morning of general ticket sales (4 September 2006). One performance was filmed, produced on DVD
DVD

DVD, also known as "Digital Versatile Disc" or "Digital Video Disc,"is a popular optical disc data storage device media format. Its main uses are video and data storage....
, and shown on BBC Four
BBC Four

BBC Four is a BBC television channel available to digital television viewers in the UK. The part successor to BBC Knowledge, it launched on 2 March 2002....
 on 21 June 2007.

Pinter: A Celebration (October–November 2006) Sheffield Theatres
Sheffield Theatres

Sheffield Theatres is a theatre complex in Sheffield, South Yorkshire comprising of three theatres: the Crucible Theatre, the Lyceum Theatre and the Studio Theatre ....
 hosted Pinter: A Celebration
Sheffield Theatres

Sheffield Theatres is a theatre complex in Sheffield, South Yorkshire comprising of three theatres: the Crucible Theatre, the Lyceum Theatre and the Studio Theatre ....
 for a full month (11 Oct.–11 Nov. 2006). The program featured selected productions of Pinter's plays (in order of presentation): The Caretaker
The Caretaker

The Caretaker is a play by the List_of_Nobel_laureates#Literature Harold Pinter, first published in 1959. It was Pinter?s sixth stage/TV play and was the work that gave him his first significant commercial success....
, Voices, No Man's Land
No Man's Land (play)

No Man's Land is a Play by 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter written in 1974 and first produced and published in 1975....
, Family Voices
Family Voices

Family Voices is a play by Harold Pinter. It was originally written in 1980 as a radio play and was first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on January 22, 1981....
, Tea Party
Tea Party (play)

Tea Party is a play written by Harold Pinter, which Pinter adapted from his own 1963 short story of the same title. As a screenplay, it was commissioned by the European Broadcasting Union, directed by Charles Jarrott, and first transmitted on BBC Television in the programme The Largest Theatre in the World on 25 March 1965 ....
, The Room, One for the Road, and The Dumb Waiter
The Dumb Waiter

The Dumb Waiter is a one-act play by 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter written in 1957; it premiered at the Hampstead Theatre, on 21 January 1960....
; films (most his screenplays; some in which Pinter appears as an actor): The Go-Between
The Go-Between (film)

The Go-Between is a 1970 in film United Kingdom film adaptation of the The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley directed by Joseph Losey and starring Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Margaret Leighton, Michael Redgrave, and Edward Fox , among others....
, Accident, The Birthday Party
The Birthday Party (play)

The Birthday Party is the first full-length play by Harold Pinter and one of Pinter's best-known and most-frequently performed plays. After its hostile London reception almost ended Pinter's playwriting career, it went on to be considered "a classic"....
, The French Lieutenant's Woman
The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)

The French Lieutenant's Woman is a 1981 in film film directed by Karel Reisz and adapted by playwright Harold Pinter. It is based on the The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles....
, Reunion, Mojo, The Servant, and The Pumpkin Eater
The Pumpkin Eater

The Pumpkin Eater is a 1964 in film United Kingdom film which tells the story of a woman who finds herself with unfaithful husband number two and pregnant with child number six, unsure of where life is taking her....
; and other related program events: "Pause for Thought" (Penelope Wilton
Penelope Wilton

Penelope A. Wilton, Lady Holm Order of the British Empire is an English people actress....
 and Douglas Hodge
Douglas Hodge

Douglas Hodge is a United Kingdom actor, director, and musician who trained for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art .He is a council member of the National Youth Theatre for whom, in 1989, he co-wrote Pacha Mama's Blessing about the Amazon rain forests staged at the Almeida Theatre....
 in conversation with Michael Billington
Michael Billington (critic)

Michael Keith Billington is a United Kingdom author and arts critic. Theatre#Drama critic of The Guardian since October 1971, he is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and the arts; most notably, he is the authorised official biographer of 2005 Nobel...
), "Ashes to Ashes –– A Cricketing Celebration", a "Pinter Quiz Night", "The New World Order", the BBC Two
BBC Two

BBC Two is the second major terrestrial television channel of the BBC, aimed at a wide range of subject matter and interests, and specialising in intelligent yet popular programme genres....
 documentary film Arena: Harold Pinter (introd. Anthony Wall, producer of Arena
Arena (TV series)

Arena is a United Kingdom television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. It has run since 1 October 1975, and over five hundred episodes have been made....
), and "The New World Order –– A Pause for Peace" (a consideration of "Pinter's pacifist writing" [both poems and prose] supported by the Sheffield Quakers), and a screening of "Pinter's passionate and antagonistic 45-minute Nobel Prize Lecture."

50th anniversary West-End revival of The Dumb Waiter; Celebration (February 2007) Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of The Dumb Waiter
The Dumb Waiter

The Dumb Waiter is a one-act play by 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter written in 1957; it premiered at the Hampstead Theatre, on 21 January 1960....
, Lee Evans
Lee Evans (comedian)

Lee Evans is an England stand-up comedy, musician and actor....
 and Jason Isaacs
Jason Isaacs

Jason Isaacs is a United Kingdom actor born in Liverpool, Lancashire, England, who is known for his performances as Death Eater Death Eater#Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter film series films, and as lifelong criminal Michael Caffee in the internationally-broadcast Television in the United States series Brotherhood ....
 starred as Gus and Ben in "a major West end revival," directed by Harry Burton, "in a limited seven week run" at the Trafalgar Studios
Trafalgar Studios

Trafalgar Studios is a West End theatre in Whitehall in the City of Westminster.Also known as Trafalgar Studios at the Whitehall Theatre in honour of its former incarnation, the building consists of two intimate theatres designed by architects Tim Foster and John Muir....
, from 2 February 2007 through 24 March 2007. John Crowley
John Crowley (director)

John Crowley is an Ireland BAFTA-winning television director Theatre director and film director....
's film version of Pinter's play Celebration
Celebration (play)

Celebration is a Play by United Kingdom playwright Harold Pinter. It was first presented as a double-bill with Pinter's first play The Room on Thursday 16 March 2000 at the Almeida Theatre in London ....
 (2000) was shown on More 4 (Channel 4
Channel 4

Channel 4 is a UK Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom television broadcaster which began transmissions on 2 November 1982. Although commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the #Channel Four Television...
, UK), in late February 2007, "with a cast including James Bolam
James Bolam

James Bolam is an English people actor and singer, best known for his roles as Jack Ford in When the Boat Comes In and as Terry Collier in The Likely Lads and Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?...
, Janie Dee
Janie Dee

Janie Dee is an award-winning English actress and singer.She is married to the actor Rupert Wickham....
, Colin Firth
Colin Firth

Colin Andrew Firth is an United Kingdom film, television and stage actor. Firth first gained wide public attention, especially in Britain, for his portrayal of Fitzwilliam Darcy in the highly acclaimed Pride and Prejudice of Pride and Prejudice....
, James Fox
James Fox

James Fox, is an England actor....
, Michael Gambon
Michael Gambon

Michael John Gambon, Order of the British Empire is a British Academy Television Awards-winning Irish people-born United Kingdom actor who has worked in theatre, television and film....
, Julia McKenzie
Julia McKenzie

Julia McKenzie is an England Olivier Award-winning actress and theatre director....
, Sophie Okonedo
Sophie Okonedo

Sophie Okonedo is an Academy Awards-nominated England Actor....
, Stephen Rea
Stephen Rea

Stephen Rea is an Irish People actor, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his lead performance as Fergus in the 1992 in film film The Crying Game....
 and Penelope Wilton
Penelope Wilton

Penelope A. Wilton, Lady Holm Order of the British Empire is an English people actress....
."

Radio broadcast of The Homecoming (March 2007) On 18 March 2007, BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3

BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on European classical music, but jazz, world music, drama and the arts also feature....
 broadcast a new radio production of The Homecoming
The Homecoming

The Homecoming is a two-act award-winning play written in 1964 by Nobel Prize in Literature, Harold Pinter. First published in 1965, the original Broadway theatre production won the 1967 21st Tony Awards and its 40th-anniversary Broadway production at the Cort Theatre was nominated for a 2008 62nd Tony Awards for "Best Revival of a Play"....
, directed by Thea Sharrock
Thea Sharrock

Thea Sharrock is an award-winning England theatre director. In 2001, when at age 24 she became artistic director of London's Southwark Playhouse, she was the youngest artistic director in British theatre....
 and produced by Martin J. Smith, with Pinter performing the role of Max (for the first time; he had previously played Lenny on stage in 1964), Michael Gambon
Michael Gambon

Michael John Gambon, Order of the British Empire is a British Academy Television Awards-winning Irish people-born United Kingdom actor who has worked in theatre, television and film....
 as Max's brother Sam, Rupert Graves
Rupert Graves

Rupert Graves is an England actor....
 as Teddy, Samuel West
Samuel West

Samuel West is a United Kingdom actor and theatre director....
 as Lenny, James Alexandrou
James Alexandrou

James Alekos Alexandrou is an England actor of Greece descent.He was educated in Waltham Forest at Chingford Foundation School. He was later a pupil at the Young Actors Theatre #Anna Scher Theatre before landing the role of Martin Fowler in the BBC One soap opera EastEnders in 1996....
 as Joey, and Gina McKee
Gina McKee

Gina McKee is an England actor, known for her starring roles in the TV dramas Our Friends in the North and The Lost Prince for the BBC and the ITV version of The Forsyte Saga ....
 as Ruth (Martin J. Smith; West).

Revival of The Hothouse (11–27 July 2007) A revival of The Hothouse
The Hothouse

The Hothouse is a play written by Harold Pinter between two of his best-known early plays, The Birthday Party and The Birthday Party ....
, directed by Ian Rickson, with a cast including Stephen Moore
Stephen Moore (actor)

Stephen Moore is an England actor, known for his work on United Kingdom television in the 80s and 2000s.He is best recognised for his appearances in "Rock Follies " and other TV series such as The Last Place on Earth, the chidren's series The Queen's Nose and Chief Constable Mike Bishop in the TV drama Merseybeat and as Danny Tyrrell...
 (Roote), Lia Williams
Lia Williams

Lia Williams is an award winning English actress, notable for many stage, film, and television appearances. She is married to writer/producer Guy Hibbert, with whom she occasionally collaborates....
 (Miss Cutts), and Henry Woolf
Henry Woolf

Henry Woolf is a United Kingdom actor, theatre director, and teacher of acting, drama, and theatre who lives in Canada, and a longtime friend and collaborator of 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter, having stimulated Pinter to write his first play, The Room in 1956....
 (Tubb), among others, opened at the Royal National Theatre
Royal National Theatre

The Royal National Theatre, London, England, is generally known as the National Theatre and commonly as The National. It is located on the The South Bank in the London Borough of Lambeth, England, immediately east of the southern end of Waterloo Bridge....
, in London, on 11 July 2007, playing through 27 July, concurrently with a revival of Betrayal
Betrayal (play)

Betrayal is a play written by 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature English playwright Harold Pinter in 1978. Critically regarded as one of his major Drama, it features his characteristically economical dialogue, characters' hidden emotions and veiled motivations, and their self-absorbed competitive one-upmanship, face-saving, dishonesty, and...
 at the Donmar Warehouse
Donmar Warehouse

Donmar Warehouse is a small not for profit theatre in the Covent Garden area of the London Borough of Camden, with seating for 250 playgoers....
, starring Toby Stephens
Toby Stephens

Toby Stephens is an England theatre, television and film actor, best known for playing supervillain Gustav Graves in the James Bond film Die Another Day and Edward Fairfax Rochester in the BBC television adaptation of Jane Eyre ....
 (Jerry), Dervla Kirwan
Dervla Kirwan

Dervla Kirwan is an Ireland actor famous for roles in United Kingdom television shows such as Ballykissangel and Goodnight Sweetheart. She also appeared in the Doctor Who Christmas special episode, "The Next Doctor"....
 (Emma), and Samuel West
Samuel West

Samuel West is a United Kingdom actor and theatre director....
 (Robert), as directed by Roger Michell
Roger Michell

Roger Michell is an England theatre, television and film director....
 (West).

Sleuth (August 2007) Pinter's screenplay adaptation of the 1970 Tony Award
Tony Award

The Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as the Tony Awards, recognize achievement in live United States theatre and are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City....
-winning play Sleuth
Sleuth (play)

Sleuth is a 1970 play written by Anthony Shaffer. The play is set in the Wiltshire, England manor house of Andrew Wyke, an immensely successful mystery writer....
, by Anthony Shaffer
Anthony Shaffer

Anthony Joshua Shaffer was an England playwright, novelist, and screenwriter....
, is the basis for the 2007 film Sleuth
Sleuth (2007 film)

Sleuth is a 2007 in film film directed by Kenneth Branagh based on Harold Pinter's screenplay adaptation of the Tony Award-winning play Sleuth , by Anthony Shaffer and starring Jude Law as Milo Tindle and Michael Caine as Andrew Wyke....
, directed by Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Branagh

Kenneth Charles Branagh is an Emmy Award-winning, Academy Award-nominated actor and film director from Northern Ireland....
 and starring Michael Caine
Michael Caine

Sir Michael Caine Order of the British Empire , is a two-time Academy Award and multiple BAFTA Award and Golden Globe winning England film actor who has appeared in more than one hundred films....
 (in the role of Andrew Wyke, played by Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier

Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, Order of Merit was an English people Stage actor, Theatre director, and Theatrical producer. He is one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century, along with his contemporaries John Gielgud, Peggy Ashcroft and Ralph Richardson....
 in the 1972 film Sleuth) and Jude Law
Jude Law

Jude Law is an England actor, film producer and film director.He began acting with the National Youth Music Theatre in 1987, and had his first TV role in 1989....
 (in the role of Milo Tindle, played by Caine in the 1972 film). Law also produced it. Scheduled for release on 12 October, the film debuted at the 64th Venice International Film Festival on 31 August 2007 and was screened at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival
Toronto International Film Festival

The Toronto International Film Festival is a publicly-attended film festival held each September in Toronto, Ontario. The festival begins the Thursday night after Labour Day#Labour Day in Canada and lasts for ten days....
 on 10 September.

Broadway revival of The Homecoming (December 2007–April 2008) A Broadway
Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 39 large professional theaters with 500 seats or more located in the Theatre District, New York in Manhattan, New York City....
 revival of The Homecoming
The Homecoming

The Homecoming is a two-act award-winning play written in 1964 by Nobel Prize in Literature, Harold Pinter. First published in 1965, the original Broadway theatre production won the 1967 21st Tony Awards and its 40th-anniversary Broadway production at the Cort Theatre was nominated for a 2008 62nd Tony Awards for "Best Revival of a Play"....
, starring James Frain
James Frain

James Frain is an England stage and screen actor.Frain was born in Leeds, Yorkshire and raised in Essex, the eldest of eight children. He was educated at Newport Free Grammar School, studied English, Film and Drama at the University of East Anglia and trained as an actor at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London....
 as Teddy, Ian McShane
Ian McShane

Ian McShane is a Golden Globe-winning England actor. Although he has starred in a number of films, it is by his television roles that he is generally best known, particularly in the HBO Western drama Deadwood ; and will also appear in the upcoming NBC series Kings ....
 as Max, Raul Esparza
Raúl Esparza

Ra?l Eduardo Esparza is an United States stage actor.Born in Wilmington, Delaware to Cuban_Americans parents and raised in Miami, Florida, Esparza graduated from Belen Jesuit in 1988 and later received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drama from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts....
 as Lenny, Michael McKean
Michael McKean

Michael John McKean is an United States actor, comedian, composer and musician, perhaps best known for his portrayal of Squiggy's friend, Leonard 'Lenny' Kosnowski, on the sitcom Laverne and Shirley; as David St....
 as Sam, and Eve Best
Eve Best

Eve Best , is a United Kingdom actress best known for her stage work.Best grew up in Ladbroke Grove and attended Wycombe Abbey before going on to Lincoln College, Oxford where she read English....
 as Ruth, and directed by Daniel Sullivan, opened on 16 December 2007, for a "20-week limited engagement … through 13 April 2008" at the Cort Theatre
Cort Theatre

The Cort Theatre is a legitimate Broadway theatre theatre located at 138 West 48th Street in midtown-Manhattan. The Shubert Organization purchased the theatre in 1927, two years before Cort's death....
 (Gans; Horwitz).

50th anniversary revival of The Birthday Party (8–24 May 2008) The Lyric Hammersmith
Lyric Hammersmith

The Lyric Hammersmith is a theatre on King Street, in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, which takes pride in its original, "groundbreaking" productions....
 celebrated the play's 50th anniversary with a revival, directed by artistic director David Farr, and related events from 8 to 24 May 2008, including a gala performance and reception hosted by Harold Pinter on 19 May 2008, exactly fifty years after its London première there.

No Man's Land at the Gate Theatre, Dublin (August 2008), and the Duke of York's Theatre, London (through 3 January 2009) A revival of No Man's Land
No Man's Land (play)

No Man's Land is a Play by 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter written in 1974 and first produced and published in 1975....
 (1975), directed by Rupert Goold
Rupert Goold

Rupert Goold is English theatre director. He is artistic director of Headlong Theatre and from 2010 he will be an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company....
, opened at the Gate Theatre
Gate Theatre

The Gate Theatre, in Dublin, was founded in 1928 by Hilton Edwards and Miche?l MacLiammoir, initially using the Abbey Theatre's Peacock studio theatre space to stage important works by Europe and American dramatists....
, Dublin
Dublin

Dublin is both the largest city and capital of Republic of Ireland. It is located near the midpoint of Ireland's east coast, at the mouth of the River Liffey and at the centre of the Dublin Region....
, whose artistic director is Michael Colgan
Michael Colgan (theatre director)

Michael Colgan is a film and television producer and is also the Artistic Director of the Gate Theatre.Born in Dublin in 1950, he was educated at Trinity College, where as a student, he became chairman of Trinity Players....
, in August 2008, and then transferred to the Duke of York's Theatre
Duke of York's Theatre

The Duke of York's Theatre is a West End Theatre in St Martin's Lane, in the City of Westminster. It was built for Frank Wyatt and his wife, Violet Melnotte, who retained ownership of the theatre, until her death in 1935....
, London, where it played through Saturday, 3 January 2009 (BWW News Desk).

On the Monday before Christmas 2008, during its break, Pinter "was admitted to Hammersmith Hospital
Hammersmith Hospital

Hammersmith Hospital is a major teaching hospital in West London. It is associated with the Imperial College medical faculty and is part of the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham....
," where he died "two days later on Christmas Eve" from cancer, after having "suffered for more than five years from cancer of the oesophagus
Esophageal cancer

Esophageal cancer is cancer of the esophagus. There are various subtypes, primarily squamous cell cancer and adenocarcinoma. Squamous cell cancer arises from the cells that line the upper part of the esophagus....
" ("Pinter Ends"). On Friday, 26 December, when the production reopened, expressing great sadness and appreciation for their playwright, the actors paid tribute to Pinter from the stage, with Gambon reading Hirst's monologue about his "photograph album" from Act Two that, in August, Pinter had selected for him to read at his funeral, ending with a standing ovation from the audience, many of whom were in tears:

Posthumous events

Pinter's funeral (31 December 2008) Several accounts of the private funeral held for Pinter, a "half-hour ceremony conducted around the graveside" at Kensal Green Cemetery
Kensal Green Cemetery

Kensal Green Cemetery is a burial ground located in Kensal Green, London, England. It was immortalised in the lines of GK Chesterton "For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen; Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green"....
, on Wednesday afternoon, 31 December 2008, the week after his death, describe it as "directed" or "conducted" or "scripted" by Pinter himself, perhaps recalling the Father who speaks "from the grave" in his play Family Voices
Family Voices

Family Voices is a play by Harold Pinter. It was originally written in 1980 as a radio play and was first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on January 22, 1981....
. As Pinter's official biographer Michael Billington
Michael Billington (critic)

Michael Keith Billington is a United Kingdom author and arts critic. Theatre#Drama critic of The Guardian since October 1971, he is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and the arts; most notably, he is the authorised official biographer of 2005 Nobel...
, who was among approximately 50 family and friends who attended the graveside ceremony, reports: "As recently as last August [2008], [Pinter] had sat down with his wife, Antonia Fraser
Antonia Fraser

Lady Antonia Fraser, Order of British Empire , n?e Pakenham, is an English author of history and novels, best known as Antonia Fraser for writing biography and detective fiction....
, and selected the readings he wanted for his funeral." Michael Gambon
Michael Gambon

Michael John Gambon, Order of the British Empire is a British Academy Television Awards-winning Irish people-born United Kingdom actor who has worked in theatre, television and film....
 read "a speech he nightly delivers on stage in No Man's Land
No Man's Land (play)

No Man's Land is a Play by 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter written in 1974 and first produced and published in 1975....
, in which Hirst pays tribute to the emotion trapped in photo albums and asks us to 'tender the dead, as you would yourself be tendered, now, in what you would describe as your life' " (as qtd. above) and the poem "Death" (1997), which Pinter read toward the end of his 2005 Nobel Lecture, "Art, Truth and Politics"; Penelope Wilton
Penelope Wilton

Penelope A. Wilton, Lady Holm Order of the British Empire is an English people actress....
 "delivered with impeccable gravitas" a passage ending T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot

'Thomas Stearns Eliot', Order of Merit , was a poet, dramatist, and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Among his most famous writings are the poems The Love Song of J....
's "Little Gidding
Four Quartets

Four Quartets is the name given to four related poems by T. S. Eliot, collected and republished in book form in 1943. They had been published individually from 1935 to 1942....
" (1942), the last of his Four Quartets
Four Quartets

Four Quartets is the name given to four related poems by T. S. Eliot, collected and republished in book form in 1943. They had been published individually from 1935 to 1942....
: "So, while the light falls/On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel,/History is now and England"; Matthew Burton, an actor, director, and member of Pinter's cricket team The Gaieties, "read Pinter's favourite cricket poem, Francis Thompson
Francis Thompson

Francis Thompson was an England poet and ascetic. After attending college, he moved to London to become a writer, but in menial work, became addicted to opium, and was a street vagrant for years....
's At Lord's, in which the run-stealers eternally flicker to and fro"; and Stella Powell-Jones, Pinter's step-granddaughter, "read beautifully a love poem dedicated to [her grandmother] Antonia Fraser It Is Here, recalling the coup de foudre
Entre Nous

Entre Nous is a 1983 in film France biographical drama film directed by Diane Kurys, who shares the writing credits with Olivier Cohen. Set in WW2 France of 1942, the film's stars are Isabelle Huppert, Miou Miou, Guy Marchand, Jean-Pierre Bacri and Christine Pascal....
 at Pinter's first meeting with his future wife." According to the Mail Online, "The only departure from his 'script' was at the end, when a tearful Antonia stepped forward to his grave and said: 'I always get this quotation wrong. I hope I get it right today,' " going on to quote Horatio
Horatio (character)

Horatio is a character from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. A friend of Prince Hamlet from Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Horatio's origins are unknown, though he is evidently poor, and was present on the battlefield when Hamlet's father defeated 'the ambitious Norway'....
's speech after the death of Prince Hamlet
Prince Hamlet

Prince Hamlet is the protagonist in Shakespeare's Shakespearean tragedy Hamlet. He is the Prince of Denmark, nephew to the usurping King Claudius and son of the previous King of Denmark, King Hamlet....
: "Good night sweet prince:/And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!"

Theatrical dimming of lights

The night before Pinter's New Year's Eve burial, theatre marquees on Broadway dimmed their lights for a minute in tribute ("Friends"), and the final night of No Man's Land at the Duke of York's Theatre
Duke of York's Theatre

The Duke of York's Theatre is a West End Theatre in St Martin's Lane, in the City of Westminster. It was built for Frank Wyatt and his wife, Violet Melnotte, who retained ownership of the theatre, until her death in 1935....
, on 3 January 2009, starting at 6:30 p.m., all of the Ambassador Theatre Group
Ambassador Theatre Group

The Ambassador Theatre Group was co-founded by Howard Panter and Rosemary Squire in 1992. The company, known as ATG, is the largest Theatre Group in London's West End, and the second largest Theatre Group in the United Kingdom....
 in the West End
West End theatre

West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's "Theatreland". Along with New York City's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English language world....
 also dimmed their lights for an hour to honour the playwright (Smith, "Pinter to Be Honoured").

Public memorial

A "more public commemoration" is being planned, with friends and family proposing that Pinter "be accorded the honour of a memorial in Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey

The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, which is almost always referred to popularly and informally as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic architecture Church , in Westminster, London, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster....
's 'Poets' Corner
Poets' Corner

Poets? Corner is the name traditionally given to a section of the South Transept of Westminster Abbey due to the number of poets, playwrights, and writers now buried and commemorated there....
'," where one of Pinter's most revered poets, Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen Military Cross was an England poet and soldier, regarded by many as one of the leading poets of the World War I. His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of Trench warfare and Poison gas in World War I warfare was heavily influenced by his friend Siegfried Sassoon and sat in stark contrast to both the publ...
, is commemorated among many others, though, reportedly, their proposal may be meeting some resistance due to Pinter's " 'anti-religious views' " (Eden).

Other tributes and retrospectives

Prior to Pinter's death, Colgan
Michael Colgan (theatre director)

Michael Colgan is a film and television producer and is also the Artistic Director of the Gate Theatre.Born in Dublin in 1950, he was educated at Trinity College, where as a student, he became chairman of Trinity Players....
, who helmed "four major festivals of [Pinter's] work" starting in 1994, including the 2001 Harold Pinter Festival, which he curated at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is a complex of buildings in New York City....
, in New York City
New York City

The City of New York is the List of United States cities by population in the United States, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the List of urban areas by population....
, announced that he "is preparing for another major retrospective of his work in Dublin
Dublin

Dublin is both the largest city and capital of Republic of Ireland. It is located near the midpoint of Ireland's east coast, at the mouth of the River Liffey and at the centre of the Dublin Region....
 to take place in 2010," marking Pinter's 80th birthday (BWW News Desk).

After Pinter's death, at the end of January 2009, the Sydney Festival
Sydney Festival

Sydney Festival is Australia's largest and most attended annual cultural event running every January since it was first held in 1977. Its program features more than 50 events including European classical music and Contemporary classical music music, dance, circus, drama, visual arts and public lectures....
 (then in progress), Dublin's Gate Theatre
Gate Theatre

The Gate Theatre, in Dublin, was founded in 1928 by Hilton Edwards and Miche?l MacLiammoir, initially using the Abbey Theatre's Peacock studio theatre space to stage important works by Europe and American dramatists....
, and the Sydney Theatre Company
Sydney Theatre Company

The Sydney Theatre Company is one of Australia's best-known and notable theater company operating from The Wharf Theatre near The Rocks area of Sydney, as well as the Sydney Theatre and the Sydney Opera House....
, whose co-artistic directors are Australian actress Cate Blanchett
Cate Blanchett

Catherine ?lise "Cate" Blanchett is an Australian Actor and theatre director. She has won multiple acting awards, most notably two Screen Actors Guild Awardss, two Golden Globe Awards, two BAFTAs, an Academy Award, as well as the Volpi Cup at 64th Venice International Film Festival....
 and her husband, Andrew Upton
Andrew Upton

Andrew Upton is an Australian playwright, screenwriter, and director. His wife is Academy Award for Best Actress winning actress Cate Blanchett....
, announced that, on Sunday, 1 February, there would be a free, hour-long performance of readings from Pinter's works as a tribute to him, directed and introduced by Colgan and featuring Blanchett, fellow Australian actor Robert Menzies (grandson of former Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies
Robert Menzies

Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, Order of the Thistle, Order of Australia, Order of the Companions of Honour, Queen's Counsel , Australian politician, was the twelfth Prime Minister of Australia....
 and her co-star in The War of the Roses Cycle
Shakespearean history

Traditionally, the Play of William Shakespeare have been grouped into three categories: Shakespearean tragedy, Shakespearean comedies, and histories....
), and Gate Theatre actors Niall Buggy and Owen Roe; in their public statement, Blanchett and Upton "acknowledged the playwright's legacy," saying: "We are delighted to join with Sydney Festival and Ireland's celebrated Gate Theatre in this event marking the passing of one of the 20th century's theatre greats, Harold Pinter, whose influence over playwriting and performance has been so profound."

Diane Abbott
Diane Abbott

Diane Julie Abbott is a United Kingdom Labour Party Member of Parliament, representing the Hackney North and Stoke Newington United Kingdom constituencies....
, the MP
Member of Parliament

A Member of Parliament, or MP, is a representative of the voters to a parliament. In many countries the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a unique title, such as senate, and thus also have unique titles for its members, such as senators....
 for Hackney North & Stoke Newington proposed
Table (verb)

Table as a verb has two contradictory meanings, one in use in the United States and the other in the remainder of the English-speaking world....
 "an Early Day Motion in the Commons [signed by 22 other MPs so far] calling on the government to 'do all it can' to support the [residents'] campaign to restore the old Clapton Cinematograph Theatre, which opened in Lower Clapton Road
Lower Clapton

Lower Clapton is a district within the London Borough of Hackney.It is immediately adjacent to central Hackney - bounded, roughly, by the western side of Hackney Downs , the Lea Valley , Clifden Road and the Lea Bridge Road ....
 in 1910" and to turn it into "a memorial to the great dramatist" ("MP Backs Pinter Tribute Campaign"). In speaking to the House of Commons on 16 January 2009, Abbott said: "Harold Pinter is a brilliant example of the creativity that thrives in Hackney
London Borough of Hackney

The London Borough of Hackney is a London borough in East London, and forms part of inner London and North London....
. The area has always been a hub for the arts and many successful artists, writers, actors and film producers and journalists now live in the area. The idea of turning the building into a cinematic centre as a memorial to Harold Pinter is fantastic. I can think of no better way to honour this Hackney boy turned literary great and I fully support the campaign."

Civic activities and political activism


Political development

Opposed to the politics of the Cold War
Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state of conflict, tension and competition that existed between a number of world powers, including the United States, the Soviet Union, People's Republic of China, France, United Kingdom and those countries' respective allies from the mid-1940s to the early 1990s....
, in 1946 to 1947, when he was eighteen, Pinter was a conscientious objector, refusing compulsory conscription; however, he was not a pacifist
Pacifism

Pacifism is the opposition to war or violence as a means of settling disputes or gaining advantage. Pacifism covers a spectrum of views ranging from the belief that international disputes can and should be peacefully resolved; to calls for the abolition of the institutions of the military and war; to opposition to any organization of society...
, as he told Billington and others that, if he had been old enough at the time, he would have fought against the Nazis
Nazism

Nazism, officially National Socialism , refers to the ideology and practices of the National Socialist German Workers? Party under Adolf Hitler, and the policies adopted by the dictatorial government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945....
 in World War II
World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
 (Harold Pinter 21–24, 92, & 286). Although Pinter seemed to express ambivalence about "politicians" in his 1966 Paris Review interview conducted by Lawrence M. Bensky
Larry Bensky

Larry Bensky is a literature and politics journalism with more than forty years experience in both print and broadcasting, as well as a teacher and long-time political activist....
, he had actually been an early member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is an organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by Britain. It also campaigns for international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty....
 in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
 and also had supported the British Anti-Apartheid Movement
Anti-Apartheid Movement

Anti-Apartheid Movement, originally known as the Girlcott Movement, was a British organization that was at the center of the international movement opposing South Africa under apartheid and supporting South Africa's Blacks....
 (1959–1994), participating in British artists' refusal to permit professional productions of their work in South Africa in 1963 ("Playwrights in Apartheid Protest") and in subsequent related campaigns (Mbeki; Reddy).

Later political views

In his last twenty-five years, Pinter increasingly focused his essays, speeches, interviews, literary readings, and other public appearances directly on contemporary political issues. He strongly opposed the 1991 Gulf War
Gulf War

"Persian Gulf War" and "First Gulf War" redirect here. For other uses, see Persian Gulf War .The Persian Gulf War was a United Nations-authorized military conflict between Iraq and a Coalition of Gulf War from 34 nations commissioned with expelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait after Iraq's Invasion of Kuwait of Kuwait in August 1990....
, the 1999 NATO
NATO

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization , also called the Atlantic Alliance, is a military alliance established by the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on 4 April 1949....
 bombing campaign in Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia

File:LocationYugoslavia2.pngYugoslavia is a term that describes three political entities that existed successively on the Balkan Peninsula in Europe, during most of the 20th century....
 during the Kosovo War
Kosovo War

Kosovo War occurred after the Rambouillet Agreement failed in February 1999. The term Kosovo War or Kosovo Conflict is used to describe two sequential and at times parallel armed conflicts in Kosovo:...
, the United States' 2001 War in Afghanistan
War in Afghanistan (2001–present)

The War in Afghanistan, which began on October 7, 2001 as the U.S. military operation Operation Enduring Freedom, was launched by the United States with the United Kingdom in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks....
, and the 2003 Invasion of Iraq
2003 invasion of Iraq

The 2003 invasion of Iraq, from March 20 to May 1, 2003, was spearheaded by the United States, backed by United Kingdom forces and smaller contingents from Australia, Spain, Poland and Denmark....
. His political statements have evoked some strong public criticism and even, at times, ridicule and personal attacks.

In accepting an honorary degree
Honorary degree

An honorary degree or a degree honoris causa is an academic degree for which a university has waived the usual requirements . The degree itself is typically a doctorate or, less commonly, a master's degree, and may be awarded to someone who has no prior connection with the institution in question....
 at the University of Turin
University of Turin

The University of Turin is a university in the city of Turin in the Piedmont region of north-western Italy. It is considered the 4th most important university in Italy....
 (27 November 2002), he stated: "I believe that [the United States] will [attack Iraq] not only to take control of Iraqi oil, but also because the American administration is now a bloodthirsty wild animal. Bombs are its only vocabulary." Distinguishing between "the American administration" and American citizens, he added the following qualification: "Many Americans, we know, are horrified by the posture of their government but seem to be helpless" (Various Voices 243). He was very active in the anti-war movement in the United Kingdom, speaking at rallies held by the Stop the War Coalition
Stop the War Coalition

For the Australian anti-war group see Stop the War Coalition .The Stop the War Coalition is a United Kingdom anti-war group set up on 21 September 2001....
 (StWC), which reprinted his Turin speech.

In later speeches, describing former President of the United States
President of the United States

The President of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States and is the highest political official in the United States by influence and recognition....
 George W. Bush
George W. Bush

George Walker Bush served as the List of Presidents of the United States President of the United States from 2001 to 2009. He was the 46th List of Governors of Texas from 1995 to 2000 before being United States presidential inauguration as President on January 20, 2001....
 as a "mass murder
Mass murder

Mass murder is the act of murdering a large number of people, typically at the same time or over a relatively short period of time. Mass murder may be committed by individuals or organizations....
er" and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the political leader of the United Kingdom and the head of government Her Majesty's Government....
 Tony Blair
Tony Blair

Anthony Charles Lynton "Tony" Blair is a British politician, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007....
 as both "mass-murdering" and a "deluded idiot", Pinter specified that, along with other past U.S. officials, under the Geneva conventions
Geneva Conventions

The Geneva Conventions consist of four treaties formulated in Geneva, Switzerland, that set the standards for international law for humanitarian concerns....
, they are "war criminals
War crime

War crimes are "violations of the laws or customs of war"; including but not limited to "murder, the ill-treatment or deportation of civilian residents of an occupied territory to slave labor camps", "the murder or ill-treatment of prisoner of war", the killing of hostages, "the wanton destruction of cities, towns and villages, and any devast...
". He also compared the Bush administration
George W. Bush administration

The Presidency of George W. Bush began on his George W. Bush 2001 presidential inauguration on January 20, 2001 as the 43rd President of the United States....
 ("a bunch of criminal lunatics") with Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born Germany politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , popularly known as the Nazi Party....
's Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany and the Third Reich are the colloquial English names for Germany under the regime of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party , which established a Totalitarianism dictatorship that existed from 1933 to 1945....
, saying that, under Bush, the United States ("a monster out of control") strives to attain "world domination" through "Full spectrum dominance"
Full-spectrum dominance

Full-spectrum dominance is a military concept whereby a joint military structure achieves control over all elements of the battlespace using land warfare, air warfare, sea warfare and space warfare based assets....
. Pinter further described Great Britain
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
 under Tony Blair as "pathetic and supine," portraying the British nation metaphorically as a "bleating little lamb tagging behind [the United States] on a lead." In a public reading Pinter charged that Blair was participating in "an act of premeditated mass murder" instigated on behalf of "the American people," who, Pinter noted, were increasingly protesting "their government's actions."

On his official website, Pinter published his remarks to the mass peace protest demonstration held in London on 15 February 2003: "The United States is a monster out of control. Unless we challenge it with absolute determination American barbarism will destroy the world. The country is run by a bunch of criminal lunatics, with Blair as their hired Christian thug. The planned attack on Iraq is an act of premeditated mass murder" ("Speech at Hyde Park"). Those remarks anticipated his observation in his 2005 Nobel Lecture, "Art, Truth and Politics": "Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government's actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent political force–yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish" (21).

In accepting the Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen Military Cross was an England poet and soldier, regarded by many as one of the leading poets of the World War I. His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of Trench warfare and Poison gas in World War I warfare was heavily influenced by his friend Siegfried Sassoon and sat in stark contrast to both the publ...
 Award for Poetry, on 18 March 2005, wondering "What would Wilfred Owen make of the invasion of Iraq
2003 invasion of Iraq

The 2003 invasion of Iraq, from March 20 to May 1, 2003, was spearheaded by the United States, backed by United Kingdom forces and smaller contingents from Australia, Spain, Poland and Denmark....
? A bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism
State terrorism

State terrorism refers to acts of terrorism conducted by governments....
, demonstrating absolute contempt for the conception of international law
International law

Public international law concerns the structure and conduct of states and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond domestic legal interpretation and enforcement....
?", Pinter concluded: "I believe Wilfred Owen would share our contempt, our revulsion, our nausea and our shame at both the language and the actions of the American and British governments" (Various Voices 247–48).

In March 2006, upon accepting the Europe Theatre Prize, in Turin
Turín

Tur?n is a municipality in the Ahuachap?n Department Departments of El Salvador of El Salvador....
, Pinter exhorted the mostly-European audience "to resist the power of the United States," stating, "I'd like to see Europe echo the example of Latin America in withstanding the economic and political intimidation of the United States. This is a serious responsibility for Europe and all of its citizens."

Related political activities

Pinter was active in International PEN
International PEN

International PEN, the worldwide association of writers, was founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere....
, serving as a vice-president, along with American playwright Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller was an United States playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in Theater in the United States and film for almost 100 years, writing a wide variety of dramas, including celebrated Play such as The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, All My Sons, and Death of a Salesman, which are studied and performed w...
. In 1985, Pinter and Miller travelled to Turkey
Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in southwest Asia and Thrace in the Balkans region of Southern Europe....
, on a mission co-sponsored by International PEN and a Helsinki Watch
Helsinki Watch

Helsinki Watch was a private American Non-governmental organization devoted to monitoring Helsinki implementation. It was created in 1978 to monitor compliance to the Helsinki Final Act ....
 committee to investigate and protest the torture of imprisoned writers. There he met victims of political oppression and their families. At an American embassy dinner in Ankara
Ankara

Ankara is the capital city of Turkey and the country's List of largest cities and second largest cities by country List of cities in Turkey after Istanbul....
, held in Miller's honour, at which Pinter was also an invited guest, speaking on behalf of those imprisoned Turkish writers, Pinter confronted the ambassador with (in Pinter's words) "the reality … of electric current on your genitals": Pinter's outspokenness apparently angered their host and led to indications for his desired departure, and Miller left the embassy with him. Recounting this episode for a tribute to Miller on his 80th birthday, Pinter concluded: "Being thrown out of the US embassy in Ankara with Arthur Miller—a voluntary exile—was one of the proudest moments in my life" ("Arthur Miller's Socks", Various Voices 56–57). Pinter's experiences in Turkey and his knowledge of the Turkish suppression of the Kurdish language
Kurdish language

The Kurdish language is a term used for the language spoken by Kurdish people. It is mainly concentrated in the parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey....
 "inspired" his 1988 play Mountain Language
Mountain Language

Mountain Language is a one-act play written by Harold Pinter, first published in the The Times Literary Supplement on 7?13 October 1988....
.


He was an active delegate of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign in the United Kingdom, an organization that defends Cuba
Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is a country in the Caribbean. It consists of the island of Cuba , the island of Isla de la Juventud, and several adjacent small islands....
, supports the government of Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary leader who was prime minister of Cuba from February 1959 to December 1976 and then president, premier until his resignation from the office in February 2008....
, and campaigns against the U.S. embargo on the country (Hands Off Cuba!). In 2001 Pinter joined the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Miloševic (ICDSM), which appealed for a fair trial for and the freedom of Slobodan Miloševic
Slobodan Miloševic

Slobodan Milo?evic, whose last/family name sometimes is transliteration as Miloshevich was President of Serbia and of President of Yugoslavia....
; he signed a related "Artists' Appeal for Miloševic" in 2004., when accessed on 29 Jan. 2009. Pinter's support of this appeal received some condemnation in the public media
Mass media

Mass media is a term used to denote a section of the media specifically envisioned and designed to reach a mainstream such as the population of a nation state....
; e.g., see Hari.

Pinter contributed letters to the editor, essays, speeches, and poetry strongly expressing his artistic and political viewpoints, which were frequently published initially in British periodicals, both in print and electronic media, and distributed and re-distributed extensively over the internet and throughout the blogosphere
Blogosphere

Blogosphere is a collective term encompassing all blogs and their interconnections. It is the perception that blogs exist together as a connected community or as a social network....
. These were distributed more widely after his winning the Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction" ....
 in 2005; his subsequent publications and related news accounts cite his status as a Nobel Laureate.

In later life he continued to sign petitions on behalf of artistic and political causes that he supported. For example, he became a signatory of the mission statement of Jews for Justice for Palestinians
Jews for Justice for Palestinians

Jews for Justice for Palestinians is an organisation based in the United Kingdom of Jews who wish to support the human rights, civil rights, economic and political rights of the Palestinian people....
 in 2005 and of its full-page advertisement, "What Is Israel Doing? A Call by Jews in Britain" featured in The Times
The Times

The Times is a daily national newspaper published in the United Kingdom since 1785 when it was known as The Daily Universal Register.The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of News International....
 on 6 July 2006. He also co-signed an open letter about events in the Middle East dated 19 July 2006, distributed to major news publications on 21 July 2006, and posted on the website of Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky is an United States linguistics, philosopher, cognitive science, political activist, author, and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor emeritus and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology....
.

On 5 February 2007 The Independent
The Independent

The Independent is a United Kingdom Compact newspaper published by Tony O'Reilly's Independent News & Media. It is nicknamed the Indy, with the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, being the Sindy....
 reported that, along with historian Eric Hobsbawm
Eric Hobsbawm

Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm Companion of Honour, FBA, is a United Kingdom historical materialism and author....
, human rights lawyer Geoffrey Bindman
Geoffrey Bindman

Sir Geoffrey Bindman was knighted in the New Year Honours 2007 list. Sir Geoffrey is a British lawyer specialising in civil liberties and human rights issues, media law, defamation, anti-discrimination and general litigation....
, fashion designer Nicole Farhi
Nicole Farhi

Nicole Farhi, Lady Hare, CBE is a Jewish French people fashion designer and sculpture born in Nice, France, of algerian descent.She started her career as a freelance in Paris, before moving to London in the 1970s to work with Stephen Marks on his French Connection label....
, film director Mike Leigh
Mike Leigh

Mike Leigh, Order of the British Empire is an England writer and director of film and theatre. He studied theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and did his early acting with the Royal Shakespeare Company ....
, and actors Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry

Stephen John Fry is an England actor, comedian, author and television presenter. With Hugh Laurie, as the comedy double act Fry and Laurie, he co-wrote and co-starred in A Bit of Fry and Laurie, and the duo also played the title roles in Jeeves and Wooster....
 and Zoë Wanamaker
Zoe Wanamaker

Zo? Wanamaker Order of the British Empire is an award-winning England-United States actor best known for her role as Susan Harper in the United Kingdom television series My Family....
, among others, Harold Pinter launched the organization Independent Jewish Voices
Independent Jewish Voices

For the Canadian group see Independent Jewish Voices . For the Australian group see Independent Australian Jewish Voices.Independent Jewish Voices is an organization launched on February 5, 2007 by 150 prominent British Jews such as Nobel laureate Harold Pinter, historian Eric Hobsbawm, lawyer Geoffrey Bindman, film director Mike Leigh...
 in the United Kingdom "to represent British Jews … in response to a perceived pro-Israeli bias in existing Jewish bodies in the UK", and, according to Hobsbawm, "as a counter-balance to the uncritical support for Israeli policies by established bodies such as the Board of Deputies of British Jews
Board of Deputies of British Jews

The Board of Deputies of British Jews is the main representative body of British Jews. Founded in 1760 as a joint committee of the Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jewish communities in London it has since become a widely recognised forum for the views of the different sectors of the United Kingdom Jewish community....
" (Hodgson; IJV Declaration
Independent Jewish Voices

For the Canadian group see Independent Jewish Voices . For the Australian group see Independent Australian Jewish Voices.Independent Jewish Voices is an organization launched on February 5, 2007 by 150 prominent British Jews such as Nobel laureate Harold Pinter, historian Eric Hobsbawm, lawyer Geoffrey Bindman, film director Mike Leigh...
).

In March 2007 Charlie Rose
Charlie Rose

Charlie Rose is an American television interviewer and journalist.Since 1991, he has hosted Butterfield, an interview Television show produced by the New York metropolitan area public broadcasting#Television television station WNET....
 had "A Conversation with Harold Pinter" on Charlie Rose
Charlie Rose (talk show)

Charlie Rose is an American television interview show, with Charlie Rose as executive producer, executive editor, and host. The show is syndicated on Public Broadcasting Service....
, filmed at the Old Vic
Old Vic

The Old Vic is a theatre located just south-east of Waterloo Station in London on the corner of The Cut and Waterloo Road, London. It became a Grade II* listed building in 1951....
, in London, and broadcast on television in the United States on PBS
Public Broadcasting Service

The Public Broadcasting Service is an United States non-profit public broadcasting television service with 354 member TV stations in the United States....
. They discussed highlights of his career and the politics of his life and work. They debated his ongoing opposition to the Iraq War
Iraq War

The Iraq War, also known as the Second Gulf War, the Occupation of Iraq, and Operation Iraqi Freedom, is an ongoing conflicts military campaign which began on March 20, 2003 with the 2003 invasion of Iraq by a Multinational force in Iraq now led by and composed almost entirely of troops from the United States and United King...
, with Rose challenging some of Pinter's views about the United States. They also discussed some of his other public protests and positions in public controversies, such as that involving the New York Theatre Workshop
New York Theatre Workshop

File:Bad-mama-jamas 0053.jpgFile:WSTM Three Blind Mice 0103.JPGNew York Theatre Workshop is an off-Broadway theatre noted for its acclaimed and innovative productions of new works....
's cancellation of their production of My Name Is Rachel Corrie
My Name is Rachel Corrie

My Name is Rachel Corrie is a Verbatim theatre of Rachel Corrie, edited by Katherine Viner and Alan Rickman, who directed it. Rachel Aliene Corrie was an American Evergreen College student and member of the International Solidarity Movement who traveled to the Gaza Strip during the Second Intifada....
, which Pinter viewed as an act of cowardice amounting to self-censorship
Self-censorship

Self-censorship is the act of censorship or Classified Information one's own work , out of fear or deference to the sensibilities of others without an authority directly pressuring one to do so....
.

In mid-June 2008, opposing "a police ban on the George Bush Not Welcome Here" demonstration organized by the Stop the War Coalition
Stop the War Coalition

For the Australian anti-war group see Stop the War Coalition .The Stop the War Coalition is a United Kingdom anti-war group set up on 21 September 2001....
 (StWC), "Pinter commented, 'The ban on the Stop The War Coalition march in protest at the visit of President Bush to this country [England] is a totalitarian act. In what is supposed to be a free country the Coalition has every right to express its views peacefully and openly. This ban is outrageous and makes the term "democracy" laughable'."

Retrospective political perspective on earlier work

In "A Play and Its Politics", the interview conducted by Nicholas Hern in February 1985 and published in the 1986 Grove Press edition of One for the Road, Pinter described his earlier plays retrospectively from the perspective of the politics of power and the dynamics of oppression. He also expressed such a perspective on his work when he participated in "Meet the Author" with Ramona Koval, at the Edinburgh Book Festival, in Edinburgh
Edinburgh

Edinburgh ; is the Capital city of Scotland, a position it has held since 1437. It is the seventh largest city in the United Kingdom and the second largest Scottish City status in the United Kingdom after Glasgow....
, Scotland, on the evening of 25 August 2006. It was his first public appearance in Britain since he had won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature and his near-death experience in hospital in the first week of December 2005, which had prevented him from travelling to Stockholm and giving his Nobel Lecture in person. Pinter described how he felt while almost dying (as if he were "drowning"). After reading an interrogation scene from The Birthday Party
The Birthday Party (play)

The Birthday Party is the first full-length play by Harold Pinter and one of Pinter's best-known and most-frequently performed plays. After its hostile London reception almost ended Pinter's playwriting career, it went on to be considered "a classic"....
, he provided a rare "explanation" of his work, according to McDowell. Pinter "wanted to say that Goldberg and McCann represented the forces in society who wanted to snuff out dissent, to stifle Stanley's voice, to silence him," and that in 1958 "One thing [the critics who almost unanimously hated the play] got wrong … was the whole history of stifling, suffocating and destroying dissent. Not too long before, the Gestapo had represented order, discipline, family life, obligation—and anyone who disagreed with that was in trouble."

In both his writing and his public speaking, as McDowell observes,

Honours

An Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society
National Secular Society

The National Secular Society is a British campaigning organisation that promotes secularism, the separation of church and state, to make society fair for everyone, whatever their belief or lack of one....
, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
Royal Society of Literature

The Royal Society of Literature is the "senior Literature organisation in United Kingdom". It was founded in 1820 by George IV of the United Kingdom, in order to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent"....
, and an Honorary Fellow of the Modern Language Association of America
Modern Language Association

The Modern Language Association of America is the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature....
 (1970), Pinter was appointed CBE
Order of the British Empire

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a United Kingdom order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom....
 in 1966 and became a Companion of Honour
Order of the Companions of Honour

The Order of the Companions of Honour is a United Kingdom and Commonwealth of Nations Order . It was founded by George V of the United Kingdom in June 1917, as a reward for outstanding achievements in the arts, literature, music, science, politics, industry, or religion....
 in 2002 (having previously declined a knighthood in 1996). In 1995 and 1996 he accepted the David Cohen Prize
David Cohen Prize

The David Cohen Prize is a literary prize awarded every two years to a writer, novelist, short-story writer, poet, essayist or dramatist in recognition of an entire body of work, written in the English language....
, in recognition of a lifetime's literary achievement, and the Laurence Olivier Special Award for a lifetime's achievement in the theatre, respectively. In 1997 he became a BAFTA
British Academy of Film and Television Arts

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is a British charity that hosts annual awards shows for excellence in film, television, television craft, video games and forms of animation....
 Fellow. He received the World Leaders Award for "Creative Genius", as the subject of a week-long "Homage" in Toronto, in October 2001. A few years later, in 2004, he received the Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen Military Cross was an England poet and soldier, regarded by many as one of the leading poets of the World War I. His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of Trench warfare and Poison gas in World War I warfare was heavily influenced by his friend Siegfried Sassoon and sat in stark contrast to both the publ...
 Award for Poetry—"in recognition of Pinter's lifelong contribution to literature, 'and specifically for his collection of poetry entitled War, published in 2003' " (Wilfred Owen Association Newsletter). In March 2006 he was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize, in recognition of lifetime achievements pertaining to drama and theatre ("Letter of Motivation"). In conjunction with that award, from 10 March to 14 March 2006, Michael Billington
Michael Billington (critic)

Michael Keith Billington is a United Kingdom author and arts critic. Theatre#Drama critic of The Guardian since October 1971, he is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and the arts; most notably, he is the authorised official biographer of 2005 Nobel...
 coordinated an international conference on "Pinter: Passion, Poetry, Politics", including scholars and critics from Europe and the Americas (Harold Pinter 427–28).

Nobel Prize in Literature

On 13 October 2005 the Swedish Academy
Swedish Academy

The Swedish Academy , founded in 1786 by King Gustav III of Sweden, is one of the Swedish Royal Academies of Sweden. Modelled after the Acad?mie fran?aise, it has 18 members....
 announced that it had decided to award the Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction" ....
 for that year to "Harold Pinter … Who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms" (press release), instigating some public controversy and criticism relating both to characteristics of Pinter's work
Characteristics of Harold Pinter's work

Characteristics of Harold Pinter's work describes prominent features of the works of British playwright, screenwriter, poet, and author of speeches and essays Harold Pinter and illustrates his influence on Anglo-American popular culture....
 and to his politics.

When interviewed that day about his own reaction to the Nobel Prize announcement by Billington, Pinter joked: "I was told today that one of the Sky channels said this morning that 'Harold Pinter is dead'. Then they changed their mind and said, 'No, he's won the Nobel prize.' So I've risen from the dead" (Billington, " 'They said' ").

Nobel Week, including the Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize , established in the 1895 will of Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel; it was first awarded in Nobel Prize in Physics, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Nobel Prize in Literature, and Nobel Peace Prize in 1901....
 Awards Ceremony in Stockholm
Stockholm

is the capital and largest city of Sweden. It is the site of the national Swedish Government of Sweden, the Parliament of Sweden, and the official residence of the Swedish Monarchy of Sweden....
 and related events throughout Scandinavia, began in the first few days of December 2005. Due to medical concerns about his health, Pinter and his family could not attend the Awards Ceremony and those events. After the Academy notified him of his award, although he had arranged for his publisher (Stephen Page of Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber

Faber and Faber, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T....
) to accept his Nobel Diploma and Nobel Medal at the Awards Ceremony scheduled for 10 December, he had still planned to travel to Stockholm
Stockholm

is the capital and largest city of Sweden. It is the site of the national Swedish Government of Sweden, the Parliament of Sweden, and the official residence of the Swedish Monarchy of Sweden....
, to present his lecture in person a few days earlier (Honigsbaum). In November, however, discovering the infection that would nearly kill him, his doctor hospitalised him and barred such travel (Billington, Harold Pinter 423–24).

Art, Truth and Politics: The Nobel Lecture

Though still hospitalised, Pinter went to a Channel 4
Channel 4

Channel 4 is a UK Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom television broadcaster which began transmissions on 2 November 1982. Although commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the #Channel Four Television...
 studio to videotape his Nobel Lecture: "Art, Truth and Politics", which was projected on three large screens at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm
Stockholm

is the capital and largest city of Sweden. It is the site of the national Swedish Government of Sweden, the Parliament of Sweden, and the official residence of the Swedish Monarchy of Sweden....
 on the evening of 7 December 2005.

Simultaneously transmitted on Channel 4
Channel 4

Channel 4 is a UK Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom television broadcaster which began transmissions on 2 November 1982. Although commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the #Channel Four Television...
 in the UK that evening, but "totally ignored by the BBC" (Billington, Harold Pinter 424), the 46-minute television broadcast was introduced by friend and fellow playwright David Hare
David Hare (dramatist)

Sir David Hare is an English people playwright and Theatre director and film director....
. Subsequently, the full text and streaming video formats were posted for the public on the Nobel Prize and Swedish Academy official websites. In these formats Pinter's Nobel Lecture has been widely watched, cited, quoted, and distributed by print and online media and the source of much commentary and debate (425–27).

Pinter's Nobel Lecture, Art, Truth and Politics provoked extensive public controversy, with some media
Mass media

Mass media is a term used to denote a section of the media specifically envisioned and designed to reach a mainstream such as the population of a nation state....
 commentators accusing Pinter of "anti-Americanism" (Allen-Mills). Yet he emphasizes that he criticizes policies and practices of American administrations (and those who voted for them), not all American citizens, many of whom he recognizes as "demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government's actions"

As a result of his Nobel Prize and his controversial Nobel Lecture, interest in Pinter's life and work surged. They led to new revivals of his plays, to Billington's updating his biography (retitled Harold Pinter), and to new editions of Pinter's works, such as The Essential Pinter and The Dwarfs, by Grove Press
Grove Press

Grove Press is an United States of America publisher that was founded in 1951. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an influential Alternative media book press in the United States....
, and a three-volume box set including The Birthday Party, No Man's Land, and Mountain Language and Celebration entitled Four Plays, by Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber

Faber and Faber, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T....
.

Illuminations released its DVD
DVD

DVD, also known as "Digital Versatile Disc" or "Digital Video Disc,"is a popular optical disc data storage device media format. Its main uses are video and data storage....
 and VHS
VHS

The Video Home System, better known by its abbreviation VHS, is a recording and playing standard developed by JVC and launched in Europe and Asia in September 1976, and the United States in June 1977....
 video recordings of Pinter's Nobel Lecture (without Hare's introduction).

Légion d'honneur

On 18 January 2007 the French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin
Dominique de Villepin

Dominique de Villepin A career diplomat, Villepin rose through the ranks of the French right as one of Jacques Chirac's prot?g?s. He came into the international spotlight as Foreign Minister with his opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq which culminated with a speech to the United Nations ....
, himself a published poet, presented Pinter with France's highest civil honour, the Légion d'honneur
Légion d'honneur

The L?gion d'honneur or Ordre national de la L?gion d'honneur is a France order established by Napoleon I of France, First Consul of the French First Republic, on May 19, 1802....
, at a ceremony at the French embassy in London, shortly after holding talks with Tony Blair
Tony Blair

Anthony Charles Lynton "Tony" Blair is a British politician, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007....
. Prime Minister de Villepin "praised Mr Pinter's poem American Football (1991)," saying: " 'With its violence and its cruelty, it is for me one of the most accurate images of war, one of the most telling metaphors of the temptation of imperialism and violence.' " "In return," Pinter "praised France for its opposition to the war in Iraq." M. de Villepin concluded: "The poet stands still and observes what doesn't deserve other men's attention. Poetry teaches us how to live and you, Harold Pinter, teach us how to live." He said that Pinter received the award particularly "because in seeking to capture all the facets of the human spirit, [Pinter's] works respond to the aspirations of the French public, and its taste for an understanding of man and of what is truly universal." Lawrence Pollard observed that "the award for the great playwright underlines how much Mr Pinter is admired in countries like France as a model of the uncompromising radical intellectual."

Pinter and academia

Some scholars and critics challenge the validity of Pinter's critiques of what he terms "the modes of thinking of those in power" (Merritt, Pinter in Play 171–89; 180) or dissent from his retrospective viewpoints on his own work (Begley; Karwowski; and Quigley).

In his personal political history, however, Scholars agree that Pinter's dramatic rendering of power relations results from such astute "critical and moral scrutiny".

Pinter's aversion to any censorship by "the authorities" is epitomised in Petey's line at the end of The Birthday Party
The Birthday Party (play)

The Birthday Party is the first full-length play by Harold Pinter and one of Pinter's best-known and most-frequently performed plays. After its hostile London reception almost ended Pinter's playwriting career, it went on to be considered "a classic"....
. As the broken-down and reconstituted Stanley is being carted off by the figures of authority Goldberg and McCann, Petey calls out after him, "Stan, don't let them tell you what to do!" "I've lived that line all my damn life. Never more than now," he told Gussow in 1988. Pinter's ongoing opposition to what he terms "the modes of thinking of those in power"—the "brick wall" of the "minds" perpetuating the "status quo" (Merritt, Pinter in Play 180)—infuses the "vast political pessimism" that some academic critics may perceive in his artistic work (Grimes 220), its "drowning landscape" of harsh contemporary realities, with some residual "hope for restoring the dignity of man" (Pinter, Art, Truth and Politics 9, 24).

Pinter's longtime friends the directors and actors David Jones
David Jones (director)

David Hugh Jones was a British stage, television, and film director....
 and Henry Woolf
Henry Woolf

Henry Woolf is a United Kingdom actor, theatre director, and teacher of acting, drama, and theatre who lives in Canada, and a longtime friend and collaborator of 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter, having stimulated Pinter to write his first play, The Room in 1956....
 would remind analytically-inclined scholars and dramatic critics that Pinter is a "great comic
Comedy

Comedy as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse generally intended to amuse, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western culture origins are found in Ancient Greece....
 writer" (Coppa); yet, as Pinter himself said of The Caretaker
The Caretaker

The Caretaker is a play by the List_of_Nobel_laureates#Literature Harold Pinter, first published in 1959. It was Pinter?s sixth stage/TV play and was the work that gave him his first significant commercial success....
, his work is only "funny, up to a point." "After that point," his dramatic conflicts present serious implications for his characters and his audiences, leading to sustained inquiry about his work and multiple "critical strategies" for dealing with their responses to it (Merritt, Pinter in Play).

On 9 October 2008, the Central School of Speech and Drama
Central School of Speech and Drama

The Central School of Speech and Drama was founded in 1906 by Elsie Fogerty to offer a new form of training in speech and drama for young actors and other students....
 announced that Pinter had agreed to become its president
President

President is a title held by many leaders of organizations, company, trade unions, university, and country. Etymology, a "president" is one who Wiktionary:Preside, who sits in leadership ....
 and to receive an honorary fellowship
Honorary title (academic)

Honorary titles in academia may be conferred on persons in recognition of contributions by a non-employee or by an employee beyond regular duties....
 in the School's graduation ceremony on 10 December 2008 ("Central Announces"). On his appointment Pinter commented: "I was a student at Central in 1950–51. I enjoyed my time there very much and I am delighted to become president of a remarkable institution" (Smith, "Pinter Replaces"). But Pinter had to receive that honorary degree, his 20th, in absentia, due to ill health ("Degree Honour"; "2008 Central School"). His presidency of the School was very brief, as he died just two weeks after the graduation ceremony, on 24 December 2008.

Archive

Unpublished manuscripts relating to Harold Pinter and his works, and letters to and from him are held in the Modern Literary Manuscripts division of the British Library
British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is based in London and is one of the world's largest List of Research libraries, holding over 150 million items in all known languages and formats; books, journals, newspapers, magazines, Sound recording, patents, databases, maps, stamps, Printmaking, drawings and much mor...
 (BL), where the catalogued Harold Pinter Archive reopened on 2 February 2009 (O'Brien), and at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center

The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center is a library and archive at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the United States and Europe....
, at the University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at Austin

The University of Texas at Austin is a public university research university located in Austin, Texas, Texas, United States, and is the flagship#University campuses institution of University of Texas System....
; The Lilly Library, at Indiana University at Bloomington; the Mandeville Special Collections Library, Geisel Library, at the University of California, San Diego
University of California, San Diego

The University of California, San Diego is a public research university in San Diego, California, California. The school's campus contains 694 buildings and is located in the La Jolla, San Diego, California community....
; at the British Film Institute
British Film Institute

The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:...
, in London, England; in the Margaret Herrick Library
Margaret Herrick

Margaret Herrick , was the librarian and director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Herrick is generally credited with naming the Academy Awards an "Oscar", declaring the statuettes "looked just like my Uncle Oscar"....
, Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study
Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study

The Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study is an Archives Facility for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences located at 1313 Vine Street, in central Hollywood, Los Angeles, California....
, at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures....
, in Beverly Hills, California
Beverly Hills, California

Beverly Hills is a city in the western part of Los Angeles County, California, California, United States. Beverly Hills and the neighboring city of West Hollywood, California are together entirely surrounded by the city of Los Angeles, California....
; and in other public and private collections.

After Pinter's death, the British Library updated its official Harold Pinter Archive Blog, posting a memorial notice on 29 December 2008, stating that "Harold was a formidable and generous champion of the Library and its work, and the British Library was immensely proud to have added the Pinter archive to our Manuscript Collections in 2007," and promising that "more detailed tributes" would be appearing there soon. On 6 January 2009, Jamie Andrews, Head of Modern Literary Manuscripts at the British Library and custodian of Pinter's Archive, posted " 'Tender the dead, as you yourself would be tendered...' ", alluding to Hirst's monologue about the faces of the dead in his photograph album from No Man's Land
No Man's Land (play)

No Man's Land is a Play by 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter written in 1974 and first produced and published in 1975....
. He begins by relating his experience as an invited panelist in the Allied Organization program arranged by the Harold Pinter Society
Harold Pinter and academia

Harold Pinter and academia concerns academia recognition of and scholarship pertaining to 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter, Companion of Honour, Order of the British Empire, the English people playwright, screenwriter, actor, director, poet, and political activist, who became president of the Central School of Speech and Drama, a...
 at the 2008 MLA
Modern Language Association

The Modern Language Association of America is the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature....
 Convention, on 28 December, after having seen Goold's production "just a few days before news of Harold's passing" on the 24th. "Already carrying the lines and images around" in his head when he "read of the use of Hirst's monologue as part of the funeral," he concludes: "As always with Pinter, there's a certain ambiguity to [Briggs's] swift response 'They're blank, mate, blank. The blank dead'. Personally, I'm with Hirst who, after a trademark 'silence', ripostes quite simply: 'Nonsense'."

See also

  • Being Harold Pinter
    Belarus Free Theatre

    Belarus Free Theatre is an underground culture that began on 30 March 2005, during the second term of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, as an artistic means of resisting Belarusian government pressure and censorship....
     (Belarus Free Theatre
    Belarus Free Theatre

    Belarus Free Theatre is an underground culture that began on 30 March 2005, during the second term of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, as an artistic means of resisting Belarusian government pressure and censorship....
    )
  • Jewish left
    Jewish left

    The term "Jewish left" describes Jews who identify with or support left wing, occasionally Liberalism causes, consciously as Jews, either as individuals or through organizations....


Works cited


Bio-bibliography


The Swedish Academy
Swedish Academy

The Swedish Academy , founded in 1786 by King Gustav III of Sweden, is one of the Swedish Royal Academies of Sweden. Modelled after the Acad?mie fran?aise, it has 18 members....
. : Harold Pinter, Nobel Prize in Literature 2005". NobelPrize.org. The Swedish Academy and The Nobel Foundation, 2005. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 5 Jan. 2009. (Contains both and ", with the latter hyperlinked separately in site menu.)

Obituaries and related articles


Abbott, Diane
Diane Abbott

Diane Julie Abbott is a United Kingdom Labour Party Member of Parliament, representing the Hackney North and Stoke Newington United Kingdom constituencies....
. . DianeAbbott.org.uk. Diane Abbott Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (site funded from the Parliamentary Members Communications Allowance), 16 Jan. 2009. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 28 Jan. 2009. (Press release.)

Adams, Stephen. . Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in 1855. Excepting the Financial Times and The Herald , it is the only remaining national daily newspaper printed on traditional newsprint in the broadsheet format in the United Kingdom, as most other broadsheet publications have converted to the smaller tabloid/Compa...
. Telegraph Media Group
The Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in 1855. Excepting the Financial Times and The Herald , it is the only remaining national daily newspaper printed on traditional newsprint in the broadsheet format in the United Kingdom, as most other broadsheet publications have converted to the smaller tabloid/Compa...
, 31 Dec. 2008. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 6 Jan. 2009. ("His plays were masterpieces of artistic control. And even at his own funeral Harold Pinter made sure he exerted a director's influence.")

Andrews, Jamie. . Harold Pinter Archive Blog: British Library Curators on Cataloguing the Pinter Archive. British Library
British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is based in London and is one of the world's largest List of Research libraries, holding over 150 million items in all known languages and formats; books, journals, newspapers, magazines, Sound recording, patents, databases, maps, stamps, Printmaking, drawings and much mor...
, 6 Jan. 2009. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 6 Jan. 2009.

Billington, Michael
Michael Billington (critic)

Michael Keith Billington is a United Kingdom author and arts critic. Theatre#Drama critic of The Guardian since October 1971, he is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and the arts; most notably, he is the authorised official biographer of 2005 Nobel...
. . Guardian.co.uk. Guardian Media Group
Guardian Media Group

Guardian Media Group plc is a company of the United Kingdom owning various mass media operations including The Guardian, The Observer and the Manchester Evening News....
, 1 Jan. 2009. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 1 Jan. 2009.

–––. . Guardian.co.uk. Guardian Media Group
Guardian Media Group

Guardian Media Group plc is a company of the United Kingdom owning various mass media operations including The Guardian, The Observer and the Manchester Evening News....
, 25 Dec. 2008. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 25 Dec. 2008.

British Library
British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is based in London and is one of the world's largest List of Research libraries, holding over 150 million items in all known languages and formats; books, journals, newspapers, magazines, Sound recording, patents, databases, maps, stamps, Printmaking, drawings and much mor...
. . Harold Pinter Archive Blog: British Library Curators on Cataloguing the Pinter Archive. British Library
British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is based in London and is one of the world's largest List of Research libraries, holding over 150 million items in all known languages and formats; books, journals, newspapers, magazines, Sound recording, patents, databases, maps, stamps, Printmaking, drawings and much mor...
, 29 Dec. 2008. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 2 Jan. 2009.

Daily Mail Reporter. . Daily Mail. Associated Newspapers Ltd, 25 Dec. 2008. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 25 Dec. 2008.

Dodds, Paisley (Associated Press
Associated Press

The Associated Press is an Media of the United States news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, Radio station and Television station stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staffers....
). . Associated Press
Associated Press

The Associated Press is an Media of the United States news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, Radio station and Television station stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staffers....
. Rpt. in Google Hosted News. Google
Google

Google Inc. is an United States public company, earning revenue from AdWords related to its Google search, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Apps, Orkut, and YouTube services as well as selling advertising-free versions of the Google Search Appliance....
, 25 Dec. 2008. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 26 Dec. 2008.

Dorfman, Ariel
Ariel Dorfman

File:DorfmanA1.jpgAriel Dorfman is a Chilean-United States novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985....
. . Washington Post
The Washington Post

The Washington Post is the newspaper with the largest circulation in Washington, D.C., United States and is the city's oldest paper, founded in 1877....
. Washington Post, 27 Dec. 2008, A15. Print. The Washington Post Company, 27 Dec. 2008. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 9 Jan. 2009.

–––. . New Statesman
The New Statesman

The New Statesman was an award-winning United Kingdom sitcom of the late 1980s and early 1990s satirising the Conservative Party government of the time....
, Jan. 2009. New Statesman, 8 Jan. 2009. World Wide Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 9 Jan. 2009. ("Ariel Dorfman on the life and work of Harold Pinter [1930–2008].")

Driscoll, Margarette. . Times Online
The Times

The Times is a daily national newspaper published in the United Kingdom since 1785 when it was known as The Daily Universal Register.The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of News International....
. News International
News International

News International Ltd is a United Kingdom newspaper publisher owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Until June 2002, it was called News International plc....
 (News Corporation
News Corporation

News Corporation , , ) is one of the world's largest Media conglomerate conglomerates. The company's Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Founder is Rupert Murdoch and the President and Chief Operating Officer is Peter Chernin....
), 11 Jan. 2009. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 11 Jan. 2009. ("After Harold Pinter's death, his grandson [Simon Soros] celebrated the playwright with a rap. ... Simon began his offering, which is being considered for publication in the scholarly American journal The Pinter Review
Harold Pinter and academia

Harold Pinter and academia concerns academia recognition of and scholarship pertaining to 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter, Companion of Honour, Order of the British Empire, the English people playwright, screenwriter, actor, director, poet, and political activist, who became president of the Central School of Speech and Drama, a...
, on the way home from hospital. ... He finished the second stanza of the poem while the rest of the family attended Christmas mass. ... The poem reveals a surprisingly tender side to the otherwise prickly and opinionated auteur. ... Simon's creation touchingly reveals how fully the playwright had been absorbed into the sprawling Fraser
Antonia Fraser

Lady Antonia Fraser, Order of British Empire , n?e Pakenham, is an English author of history and novels, best known as Antonia Fraser for writing biography and detective fiction....
 clan after he became stepfather to her six children in 1980." See the poem "Grandpa", © Simon Soros 2008, listed below.)

Eden, Richard. . Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in 1855. Excepting the Financial Times and The Herald , it is the only remaining national daily newspaper printed on traditional newsprint in the broadsheet format in the United Kingdom, as most other broadsheet publications have converted to the smaller tabloid/Compa...
. Telegraph Media Group
The Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in 1855. Excepting the Financial Times and The Herald , it is the only remaining national daily newspaper printed on traditional newsprint in the broadsheet format in the United Kingdom, as most other broadsheet publications have converted to the smaller tabloid/Compa...
, 3 Jan. 2009. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 3 Jan. 2009.

. Guardian.co.uk. Guardian Media Group
Guardian Media Group

Guardian Media Group plc is a company of the United Kingdom owning various mass media operations including The Guardian, The Observer and the Manchester Evening News....
, 27 Dec. 2008. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 7 Mar. 2009. ("Pinter broke the rules in art and in life.")

Fenton, Anna, and Lucy Jackson. . Journal
The Journal (student newspaper)

The Journal is an independent, fortnightly, local newspaper produced by students at five major higher education institutes in Edinburgh. It is distributed at a number of locations across the city's universities, as well as at bars and caf?s throughout the Scottish capital....
. The Edinburgh Journal Limited, 11 Jan. 2009. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 12 Jan. 2009. ("One of the most important writers of his generation, Harold Pinter's literary genius and tireless political activism will continue to make a formidable impact long after his death. ... What made him such a remarkable playwright—and political activist—is that he held on to his unrelenting non-conformity to the end.")

. BBC News
BBC News

BBC News, formerly BBC News and Current Affairs, is the department within the BBC responsible for the corporation's news-gathering and production of news programmes on BBC television, radio and online....
. BBC, 1 Jan. 2009. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 1 Jan. 2009.

Gussow, Mel
Mel Gussow

Melvyn H. Gussow was an influential USA theater critic who wrote for The New York Times for 35 years.Born in New York City to parents Donald and Betty Gussow, the elder of two sons, Gussow was of Lithuanian descent, grew up in Rockville Centre, New York, located in the Town of Hempstead , New York, Long Island, New York; his younger b...
, and Ben Brantley
Ben Brantley

Ben Brantley is the chief theater critic of the New York Times....
.. New York Times
The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper published in New York City. The largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States, "The Gray Lady"?named for its staid appearance and style?is regarded as a national newspaper of record....
. New York Times
The New York Times Company

The New York Times Company is an United States media company best known as the publisher of its namesake, The New York Times. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr....
, 25 Dec. 2008, Theater. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 26 Dec. 2008. (Web version of article listed below.)

–––. "Harold Pinter, Whose Silences Redefined Drama, Dies at 78". New York Times
The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper published in New York City. The largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States, "The Gray Lady"?named for its staid appearance and style?is regarded as a national newspaper of record....
 26 Dec. 2008, national ed., sec. A: 1, A22–23. Print. [Cites "Online: A Pinter Appraisal: An audio evaluation by Ben Brantley, reviews of Mr. Pinter's plays and more". Print version of article listed above.]

. Economist
The Economist

The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international relations publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in London....
, People: Obituary. The Economist Group
The Economist Group

File:The Economist Group 111 W57 jeh.JPGThe Economist Group is a group of companies that sell publications and services under The Economist brand, such as The Economist , Economist.com, Economist Intelligence Unit, Economist Conferences, Intelligent Life and The World In....
, 30 Dec. 2008. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 15 Jan. 2009. ("Harold Pinter, playwright and polemicist, died on December 24, aged 78.")

. English PEN, News. The English Centre of International PEN
International PEN

International PEN, the worldwide association of writers, was founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere....
, 25 Dec. 2008. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 11 Jan. 2009. (Includes an introductory tribute written by Jonathan Heawood
Jonathan Heawood

Jonathan Heawood is director of the English Centre of International PEN. He is a former deputy literary editor of The Observer and editor of the Fabian Society....
 and a selection of messages received from around the world.)

. The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement

The Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation....
. News International
News International

News International Ltd is a United Kingdom newspaper publisher owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Until June 2002, it was called News International plc....
 (News Corporation
News Corporation

News Corporation , , ) is one of the world's largest Media conglomerate conglomerates. The company's Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Founder is Rupert Murdoch and the President and Chief Operating Officer is Peter Chernin....
), 29 Dec. 2008. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 9 Jan. 2009.

. Granta
Granta

Granta is a literary magazine and publisher in the United Kingdom....
. Granta
Granta

Granta is a literary magazine and publisher in the United Kingdom....
, 25 Dec. 2008. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 2 Jan. 2009.

Lafferty, Julia. . Hackney Gazette
Archant

Archant is a publishing company, based in Norwich. The group publishes four daily newspapers, around 75 weekly newspapers, and 75 consumer and contract magazines....
, Letters. Archant
Archant

Archant is a publishing company, based in Norwich. The group publishes four daily newspapers, around 75 weekly newspapers, and 75 consumer and contract magazines....
, 7 Jan. 2009. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 28 Jan. 2009.

Marowitz, Charles
Charles Marowitz

Charles Marowitz is an influential United States critic, theatre director, and playwright who has been a "regular columnist on Swans , the Cultural-Political bi-weekly" since 2004 ....
. . Swans, Commentary. Swans, 29 Dec. 2008 – 1 Jan. 2009. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 13 Jan. 2009.

Morgan, Clare. . Sydney Morning Herald
The Sydney Morning Herald

The Sydney Morning Herald is a daily broadsheet newspaper published by Fairfax Media in Sydney, Australia. The newspaper's Sunday edition, The Sun-Herald, is published in tabloid format....
. Fairfax Digital
Fairfax Media

Fairfax Media Limited, is one of Australia's largest diversified media companies. The group's operations include newspapers, magazines, radios and digital media operating in Australia and New Zealand....
, 28 Jan.2009. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
, 28 Jan. 2009.

. Hackney Gazette
Archant

Archant is a publishing company, based in Norwich. The group publishes four daily newspapers, around 75 weekly newspapers, and 75 consumer and contract magazines....
, News. Archant
Archant

Archant is a publishing company, based in Norwich. The group publishes four daily newspapers, around 75 weekly newspapers, and 75 consumer and contract magazines....
, 27 Jan. 2009. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 28 Jan. 2009.

. BBC News
BBC News

BBC News, formerly BBC News and Current Affairs, is the department within the BBC responsible for the corporation's news-gathering and production of news programmes on BBC television, radio and online....
. BBC, 25 Dec. 2008. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 25 Dec. 2008.

. Mail Online. Associated Newspapers Ltd, 1 Jan. 2009. Web
WorldWideWeb

WorldWideWeb was the world's first web browser and WYSIWYG HTML editor. It was introduced on February 26, 1991, by UK scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and ran on the NeXTSTEP platform....
. 4 Jan. 2009.

Smith, Alastair. . The Stage, News. The Stage Newspaper Group Ltd, 2 Jan. 2009. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 4 Jan. 2009.

Soros, Simon. . Sunday Times
The Sunday Times

The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times ...
. News International
News International

News International Ltd is a United Kingdom newspaper publisher owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Until June 2002, it was called News International plc....
 (News Corporation
News Corporation

News Corporation , , ) is one of the world's largest Media conglomerate conglomerates. The company's Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Founder is Rupert Murdoch and the President and Chief Operating Officer is Peter Chernin....
), 11 Jan. 2009. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 11 Jan. 2009. (© Simon Soros 2008). [See hyperlinked account by Driscoll listed above.]

Stothard, Peter
Peter Stothard

Sir Peter Stothard is a United Kingdom newspaper editing, currently for the Times Literary Supplement, but of The Times from 1992 to 2002....
. . Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement

The Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation....
 (TLS). Times Online
The Times

The Times is a daily national newspaper published in the United Kingdom since 1785 when it was known as The Daily Universal Register.The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of News International....
. News International
News International

News International Ltd is a United Kingdom newspaper publisher owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Until June 2002, it was called News International plc....
 (News Corporation
News Corporation

News Corporation , , ) is one of the world's largest Media conglomerate conglomerates. The company's Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Founder is Rupert Murdoch and the President and Chief Operating Officer is Peter Chernin....
), 7 Jan. 2009. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 8 Jan. 2009. (Rpt. from blog
Blog

A blog is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video....
 of TLS ed. Peter Stothard; first posted on 25 Dec. 2008.)

Taylor-Batty, Mark, comp. . Harold Pinter Society Webpages. The Harold Pinter Society
Harold Pinter and academia

Harold Pinter and academia concerns academia recognition of and scholarship pertaining to 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter, Companion of Honour, Order of the British Empire, the English people playwright, screenwriter, actor, director, poet, and political activist, who became president of the Central School of Speech and Drama, a...
, 1 Jan. 2009. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 1 Jan. 2009. ("Harold Pinter - playwright, poet, actor, director, political activist - died on 24 December 2008, aged 78 ... Here are a few of the obituaries and commentaries released by the international press and online theatre community. [Contains "Key links" and a hyperlinked "Full list" periodically being updated.])

. Times
The Times

The Times is a daily national newspaper published in the United Kingdom since 1785 when it was known as The Daily Universal Register.The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of News International....
. News International
News International

News International Ltd is a United Kingdom newspaper publisher owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Until June 2002, it was called News International plc....
 (News Corporation
News Corporation

News Corporation , , ) is one of the world's largest Media conglomerate conglomerates. The company's Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Founder is Rupert Murdoch and the President and Chief Operating Officer is Peter Chernin....
), 25 Dec. 2008. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 25 Dec. 2008.

Ulaby, Neda. . Day to Day. National Public Radio
National Public Radio

National Public Radio is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national Radio syndication to 797 public radio List of NPR stations in the United States....
, 25 Dec. 2008. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 25 Dec. 2008. (Includes audio clip
Media clip

A media clip is a short segment of media either an audio clip or a video clip.Media clips may be promotional in nature, as with movie clips....
.)

Wainwright, Hilary
Hilary Wainwright

Hilary Wainwright is a United Kingdom socialist and feminist, best known for being editor of Red Pepper magazine....
. ". Red Pepper
Red Pepper (magazine)

Red Pepper is an independent ?red, green and Radicalization? magazine based in the UK. For most of its history it appeared monthly, but relaunched as a bi-monthly during 2007....
. Red Pepper magazine, Dec. 2008. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 3 Jan. 2009. ("Hilary Wainwright reflects on Harold Pinter and Red Pepper.")

Walker, Peter, David Smith, and Haroon Siddique. . Guardian.co.uk. Guardian Media Group
Guardian Media Group

Guardian Media Group plc is a company of the United Kingdom owning various mass media operations including The Guardian, The Observer and the Manchester Evening News....
, 26 Dec. 2008. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 10 Jan. 2009. ("Multi-award winning playwright lauded by dignitaries of theatrical and political spheres. ... Tributes are being paid to the playwright Harold Pinter today from both the theatrical and political worlds after his death from cancer
Cancer

Cancer is a class of diseases in which a group of cell display uncontrolled growth , invasion , and sometimes metastasis . These three malignant properties of cancers differentiate them from benign tumors, which are self-limited, do not invade or metastasize....
, aged 78.")

. BBC News
BBC News

BBC News, formerly BBC News and Current Affairs, is the department within the BBC responsible for the corporation's news-gathering and production of news programmes on BBC television, radio and online....
. BBC, 27 Dec. 2008. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 1 Jan. 2009. (Includes video clip
Video clip

Video clips are short media clip of video, usually part of a longer piece.Video clips in digital format are often found on the internet where the massive influx of new video clips during 2006 was hailed as a new phenomenon having a profound impact on both the internet and other forms of Electronic media....
.)

Westwood, Matthew. . Australian
The Australian

The Australian, also referred to as The Oz, is a broadsheet newspaper published in Australia on Monday to Saturday each week since 1964....
. News Limited
News Limited

News Limited was the principal holding for the business interests of Rupert Murdoch until the formation of News Corporation in 1979. News Limited is now a subsidiary of that company....
, 27 Jan. 2009. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
, 28 Jan. 2009.

Winer, Linda. . Newsday
Newsday

Newsday is a daily tabloid-size, Pulitzer Prize-winning, United States newspaper that primarily serves Long Island and the New York City borough of Queens, although it is sold throughout the New York City metropolitan area....
. Newsday Inc., 25 Dec. 2008. Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
. 10 Jan. 2009.

External links

  • : The Official Website for the International Playwright Harold Pinter (home and index page).
  • at The Artists Network of Refuse & Resist!. (17 pages.) (A selection of writings by and commentary about Pinter; rpt. Pinter's 2005 Nobel Lecture: "Art, Truth & Politics".)
  • at Books and Writing
    The Book Show

    The Book Show is a Australian Australian Broadcasting Corporation program for the discussion of everything relating to the written word. It is broadcast live around Australia on Radio National with a daily weekday morning show which is then replayed nightly and also has a sunday evening show....
     with Ramona Koval
    Ramona Koval

    Ramona Koval is an Australian broadcaster, writer and journalist.Koval is known for her extended and in-depth interviews with significant writers....
    . Broadcast on Radio National
    Radio National

    ABC Radio National is an Australia-wide radio network broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation with programs including news and current affairs , arts, music, society, science, drama and comedy....
     on 15 September 2002. (Interview conducted at the Edinburgh International Book Festival
    Edinburgh International Book Festival

    The Edinburgh International Book Festival, is a book festival that takes place in the last three weeks of August every year in Charlotte Square, in the centre of Edinburgh, Scotland?s capital....
     on 25 August 2002.)
  • . (Brief biography, critical account, and selected bibliography, compiled by Roger Phillip Mellor, in the Encyclopedia of British Film. Includes hyperlinked filmography ["Film and TV Credits"], with featured works.)
  • at Faber and Faber
    Faber and Faber

    Faber and Faber, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T....
     (Pinter's publisher in the UK). (Includes hyperlinked list of Pinter's works published by Faber and Faber.)
  • at Grove Press
    Grove Press

    Grove Press is an United States of America publisher that was founded in 1951. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an influential Alternative media book press in the United States....
    , an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. (Pinter's U.S. publisher). (Includes hyperlinked list of Pinter's works published by Grove Press.)
  • at Guardian.co.uk ("The best of the Guardian's coverage, including tributes, reviews and articles from the archive." Hyperlinked content; periodically updated.)
  • at the Internet Broadway Database
    Internet Broadway Database

    The Internet Broadway Database is an online database of Broadway theatre productions and their personnel. It is operated by the Research Department of The Broadway League, a trade association for the North American commercial theatre community....
    .
  • in Books and Writers. Biography and critical account. . (Featured Nobel Prize in Literature winner for 2005.)
  • in Contemporary Writers. (Biography and critical account by Michael Billington
    Michael Billington (critic)

    Michael Keith Billington is a United Kingdom author and arts critic. Theatre#Drama critic of The Guardian since October 1971, he is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and the arts; most notably, he is the authorised official biographer of 2005 Nobel...
     for British Council: Arts
    British Council

    The British Council is a Quango based in the United Kingdom which specialises in international educational and cultural opportunities. It is a non-departmental public body, a public corporation incorporated by royal charter, and is registered as a charity in England....
    .)
  • in the Literary Encyclopedia. (Biography and critical account, by Andrew Wyllie, University of the West of England
    University of the West of England

    The University of the West of England is a university based in the England city of Bristol. Its main campus is at Frenchay, Bristol, about five miles north of the city centre....
    .)
  • in "Times Topics" of The New York Times
    The New York Times

    The New York Times is an American daily newspaper published in New York City. The largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States, "The Gray Lady"?named for its staid appearance and style?is regarded as a national newspaper of record....
    . (Index of hyperlinked collected news articles, reviews, commentaries, and photographs published in the newspaper; featured links to media clips and additional external resources.)
  • on The Mark Shenton Show, TheatreVoice
    TheatreVoice

    TheatreVoice is a free World Wide Web theatre forum launched by Dominic Cavendish and others in September 2003. It offers over 480 audio recordings of discussions about United Kingdom theatre featuring a wide range of critics, journalists, academics and theatre professionals....
    , recorded on 21 Feb. 2007. (Audio player clip.) ["Focuses on Harold Pinter, with critics Michael Billington
    Michael Billington (critic)

    Michael Keith Billington is a United Kingdom author and arts critic. Theatre#Drama critic of The Guardian since October 1971, he is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and the arts; most notably, he is the authorised official biographer of 2005 Nobel...
     and Alastair Macaulay reviewing Pinter's People
    Pinter's People

    Pinter's People is a compilation of revue sketches or short prose works by Harold Pinter, which was performed for four weeks from 30 January, 2007, at the Haymarket Theatre, in London, starring Bill Bailey, Geraldine McNulty, Sally Phillips, and Kevin Eldon....
     (Haymarket
    Haymarket Theatre

    The Theatre Royal Haymarket or Haymarket Theatre or the Little Theatre is a West End theatre in The Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use....
    ) and The Dumb Waiter
    The Dumb Waiter

    The Dumb Waiter is a one-act play by 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter written in 1957; it premiered at the Hampstead Theatre, on 21 January 1960....
     (Trafalgar
    Trafalgar Studios

    Trafalgar Studios is a West End theatre in Whitehall in the City of Westminster.Also known as Trafalgar Studios at the Whitehall Theatre in honour of its former incarnation, the building consists of two intimate theatres designed by architects Tim Foster and John Muir....
    ). Director and actor Harry Burton talks about his experiences with Pinter, and host Mark Shenton discusses upcoming Pinter productions".]
  • : British Library
    British Library

    The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is based in London and is one of the world's largest List of Research libraries, holding over 150 million items in all known languages and formats; books, journals, newspapers, magazines, Sound recording, patents, databases, maps, stamps, Printmaking, drawings and much mor...
     Curators on Cataloguing the Pinter Archive
    . Official blog. Developed by BL Cataloguer Kate O'Brien, primary contributor. (See "Pinter Archive" below.)
  • . British Library
    British Library

    The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is based in London and is one of the world's largest List of Research libraries, holding over 150 million items in all known languages and formats; books, journals, newspapers, magazines, Sound recording, patents, databases, maps, stamps, Printmaking, drawings and much mor...
     Online Gallery: What's On
    . British Library, 8 Sept. 2008. Downloadable MP3
    MP3

    MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a digital audio Encoder format using a form of lossy data compression. It is a common audio format for consumer audio storage, as well as a de facto standard encoding for the transfer and playback of music on digital audio players....
     podcast. ("Harold Pinter shares his memories of postwar British theatre with actor and director Harry Burton." Introduced by Jamie Andrews [Head, Modern Literary Manuscripts, British Library] and recorded at the Golden Generation conference at the British Library, held on 8–9 Sept. 2008.)
  • (HPS) – An Allied Organization of the Modern Language Association
    Modern Language Association

    The Modern Language Association of America is the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature....
     (MLA) and an Associated Organization of the Midwest Modern Language Association (M/MLA), The Harold Pinter Society
    Harold Pinter and academia

    Harold Pinter and academia concerns academia recognition of and scholarship pertaining to 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter, Companion of Honour, Order of the British Empire, the English people playwright, screenwriter, actor, director, poet, and political activist, who became president of the Central School of Speech and Drama, a...
     is "dedicated to studying, celebrating, and appraising the works of this prolific and frequently enigmatic writer." The Pinter Review (1987– ) is published for the HPS by the University of Tampa
    University of Tampa

    The University of Tampa, or UT, is a private, co-educational private university in downtown Tampa, Florida. It is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools....
     Press. (Periodically updated.)
  • – Announcement of A Tribute to Harold Pinter, presented by the Sydney Festival
    Sydney Festival

    Sydney Festival is Australia's largest and most attended annual cultural event running every January since it was first held in 1977. Its program features more than 50 events including European classical music and Contemporary classical music music, dance, circus, drama, visual arts and public lectures....
    , Gate Theatre
    Gate Theatre

    The Gate Theatre, in Dublin, was founded in 1928 by Hilton Edwards and Miche?l MacLiammoir, initially using the Abbey Theatre's Peacock studio theatre space to stage important works by Europe and American dramatists....
    , and Sydney Theatre Company
    Sydney Theatre Company

    The Sydney Theatre Company is one of Australia's best-known and notable theater company operating from The Wharf Theatre near The Rocks area of Sydney, as well as the Sydney Theatre and the Sydney Opera House....
    , on 1 Feb. 2009 (Sydney Festival 2009: January 10–31: "Sydney Festival News").
  • , by Harold Pinter, at nobelprize.org – Official Website of the Nobel Prize
    Nobel Prize

    The Nobel Prize , established in the 1895 will of Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel; it was first awarded in Nobel Prize in Physics, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Nobel Prize in Literature, and Nobel Peace Prize in 1901....
    . (Hyperlinked video and "The Lecture in Text Format" in the original English and in French, German, and Swedish translations.)
  • – Press release of 11 Dec. 2007 concerning the acquisition of The Harold Pinter Archive in the British Library
    The Harold Pinter Archive in the British Library

    The Harold Pinter Archive in the British Library is the literary archive of Harold Pinter, which Pinter had first placed "on permanent loan" in the British Library in September 1993 and which became a permanent acquisition in December 2007....
     (BL). (Hyperlinked BL announcement page. See "Harold Pinter Archive Blog" above.)
  • (BBC Four
    BBC Four

    BBC Four is a BBC television channel available to digital television viewers in the UK. The part successor to BBC Knowledge, it launched on 2 March 2002....
    ), 26 Oct. 2002 – 9 Nov. 2002; posted 7 Feb. 2003. [Includes a "Pinter Timeline", a "Q&A" with Pinter's official biographer Michael Billington
    Michael Billington (critic)

    Michael Keith Billington is a United Kingdom author and arts critic. Theatre#Drama critic of The Guardian since October 1971, he is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and the arts; most notably, he is the authorised official biographer of 2005 Nobel...
    , and hyperlinked RealMedia
    RealMedia

    RealMedia is a multimedia container format created by RealNetworks. Its extension is ".rm". It is typically used in conjunction with RealVideo and RealAudio and is used for Streaming media content over the Internet....
     video clip
    Video clip

    Video clips are short media clip of video, usually part of a longer piece.Video clips in digital format are often found on the internet where the massive influx of new video clips during 2006 was hailed as a new phenomenon having a profound impact on both the internet and other forms of Electronic media....
    s.]
  • . BBC Radio 3
    BBC Radio 3

    BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on European classical music, but jazz, world music, drama and the arts also feature....
    . Five episodes, each one broadcast daily from 16–20 Feb. 2009. 1: Gate Theatre
    Gate Theatre

    The Gate Theatre, in Dublin, was founded in 1928 by Hilton Edwards and Miche?l MacLiammoir, initially using the Abbey Theatre's Peacock studio theatre space to stage important works by Europe and American dramatists....
     director Michael Colgan; 2: Critic Michael Billington
    Michael Billington (critic)

    Michael Keith Billington is a United Kingdom author and arts critic. Theatre#Drama critic of The Guardian since October 1971, he is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and the arts; most notably, he is the authorised official biographer of 2005 Nobel...
    ; 3: Writer Lisa Appignanesi
    Lisa Appignanesi

    Lisa Appignanesi is a British writer, historian, campaigner for freedom of the press and President of the English branch of International PEN....
    ; 4: Film historian Ian Christie
    Ian Christie

    Ian Christie is an English jazz clarinetist, best known for playing in a number of trad jazz ensembles of the 1950s.Christie's brother was Keith Christie, a noted trombonist who died in 1980....
    ; and 5: Actor and director Harry Burton. (Preceded on 15 Feb. 2009 by : Moonlight
    Moonlight (play)

    Moonlight is a Play written by 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter, which premiered at the Almeida Theatre, in London, in September 1993....
     and Voices. Streaming audio
    Streaming media

    Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by, and normally presented to, an End-user while it is being delivered by a streaming provider ....
     accessible for 7 days after broadcast.)
  • . Red Pepper
    Red Pepper (magazine)

    Red Pepper is an independent ?red, green and Radicalization? magazine based in the UK. For most of its history it appeared monthly, but relaunched as a bi-monthly during 2007....
     Feb. 2004. (Archived version.) [Texts of poems "Weather Forecast", "Democracy", "The Bombs", and "God Bless America".]
  • (10th Edition of the Europe Theatre Prize, Turin, Italy, 8–12 Mar. 2006). (Hyperlinked program, jury, events [including Pinter: Passion, Poetry and Politics], and letter of motivation to Harold Pinter; site includes Italian, English, French, and Spanish language options.)
  • on TheatreVoice
    TheatreVoice

    TheatreVoice is a free World Wide Web theatre forum launched by Dominic Cavendish and others in September 2003. It offers over 480 audio recordings of discussions about United Kingdom theatre featuring a wide range of critics, journalists, academics and theatre professionals....
    . Clip of program recorded on 14 Oct. 2005. (Critical assessment by Michael Billington
    Michael Billington (critic)

    Michael Keith Billington is a United Kingdom author and arts critic. Theatre#Drama critic of The Guardian since October 1971, he is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and the arts; most notably, he is the authorised official biographer of 2005 Nobel...
    , Dan Rebellato, Charles Spencer
    Charles Spencer (journalist)

    Charles Spencer is a United Kingdom journalist and longstanding drama critic of the Daily Telegraph.He was educated at Charterhouse School and Balliol College, Oxford where he was a member of the Bullingdon Club....
     and Ian Smith"; hosted by Aleks Sierz
    In-yer-face theatre

    In-yer-face theatre describes drama that emerged in Great Britain in the 1990s. This Categorization coined by United Kingdom theatre critic Aleks Sierz is the title of his book, In-Yer-Face Theatre, first published by Faber and Faber in March 2001....
    .)