Harold Pinter (/ˈpɪntər/; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. ANobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays includeThe Birthday Party (1957),The Homecoming (1964) andBetrayal (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works includeThe Servant (1963),The Go-Between (1971),The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981),The Trial (1993) andSleuth (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television and film productions of his own and others' works.
Pinter's career as a playwright began with a production ofThe Room in 1957. His second play,The Birthday Party, closed after eight performances but was enthusiastically reviewed by criticHarold Hobson. His early works were described by critics as "comedy of menace". Later plays such asNo Man's Land (1975) andBetrayal (1978) became known as "memory plays". He appeared as an actor in productions of his own work on radio and film, and directed nearly 50 productions for stage, theatre and screen. Pinter received over 50 awards, prizes and other honours, including theNobel Prize in Literature in 2005 and the FrenchLégion d'honneur in 2007.
Despite frail health after being diagnosed withoesophageal cancer in December 2001, Pinter continued to act on stage and screen, last performing the title role ofSamuel Beckett's one-act monologueKrapp's Last Tape, for the 50th anniversary season of theRoyal Court Theatre, in October 2006. He died fromliver cancer on 24 December 2008.
Biography
Early life and education
Pinter was born on 10 October 1930, inHackney, east London, the only child of British Jewish parents of Eastern European descent. His father, Hyman "Jack" Pinter was a ladies' tailor, and his mother, Frances (née Moskowitz) was a housewife.[2][3] Pinter believed an aunt's erroneous view that the family wasSephardic and had fled theSpanish Inquisition; thus, for his early poems, Pinter used the pseudonymPinta and at other times used variations such asda Pinto.[4] Later research byLady Antonia Fraser, Pinter's second wife, revealed the legend to be apocryphal; three of Pinter's grandparents came from Poland and the fourth fromOdesa, so the family wasAshkenazic.[4][5][6]
Pinter's family home in London is described by his official biographerMichael Billington as "a solid, red-brick, three-storey villa just off the noisy, bustling, traffic-ridden thoroughfare of theLower Clapton Road".[7] In 1940 and 1941, afterthe Blitz, Pinter wasevacuated from their house in London toCornwall andReading.[7] Billington states that the "life-and-death intensity of daily experience" before and during the Blitz left Pinter with profound memories "of loneliness, bewilderment, separation and loss: themes that are in all his works."[8]
Pinter discovered his social potential as a student atHackney Downs School, a London grammar school, between 1944 and 1948. "Partly through the school and partly through the social life of Hackney Boys' Club ... he formed an almostsacerdotal belief in the power of male friendship. The friends he made in those days – most particularlyHenry Woolf, Michael (Mick) Goldstein and Morris (Moishe) Wernick – have always been a vital part of the emotional texture of his life."[6][9] A major influence on Pinter was his inspirational English teacher Joseph Brearley, who directed him in school plays and with whom he took long walks, talking about literature.[10] According to Billington, under Brearley's instruction, "Pinter shone at English, wrote for the school magazine and discovered a gift for acting."[11][12] In 1947 and 1948, he playedRomeo andMacbeth in productions directed by Brearley.[13]
At the age of 12, Pinter began writing poetry, and in spring 1947, his poetry was first published in theHackney Downs School Magazine.[14] In 1950 his poetry was first published outside the school magazine, inPoetry London, some of it under the pseudonym "Harold Pinta".[15][16]
Pinter enjoyed running and broke the Hackney Downs School sprinting record.[18][19]He was acricket enthusiast, taking his bat with him when evacuated during the Blitz.[20] In 1971, he toldMel Gussow: "one of my main obsessions in life is the game of cricket—I play and watch and read about it all the time."[21] He was chairman of the Gaieties Cricket Club, a supporter ofYorkshire Cricket Club,[22] and devoted a section of his official website to the sport.[23] One wall of his study was dominated by a portrait of himself as a young man playing cricket, which was described bySarah Lyall, writing inThe New York Times: "The painted Mr. Pinter, poised to swing his bat, has a wicked glint in his eye; testosterone all but flies off the canvas."[24][25] Pinter approved of the "urban and exacting idea of cricket as a bold theatre of aggression."[26] After his death, several of his school contemporaries recalled his achievements in sports, especially cricket and running.[27] TheBBC Radio 4 memorial tribute included an essay on Pinter and cricket.[28]
Other interests that Pinter mentioned to interviewers are family, love and sex, drinking, writing, and reading.[29] According to Billington, "If the notion of male loyalty, competitive rivalry and fear of betrayal forms a constant thread in Pinter's work fromThe Dwarfs onwards, its origins can be found in his teenage Hackney years. Pinter adores women, enjoys flirting with them, and worships their resilience and strength. But, in his early work especially, they are often seen as disruptive influences on some pure andPlatonic ideal of male friendship: one of the most crucial of all Pinter's lostEdens."[6][30]
Early theatrical training and stage experience
Beginning in late 1948, Pinter attended theRoyal Academy of Dramatic Art for two terms, but hating the school, missed most of his classes, feigned a nervous breakdown, and dropped out in 1949.[31] In 1948 he was called up forNational Service. He was initially refused registration as aconscientious objector, leading to his twice being prosecuted, and fined, for refusing to accept a medical examination, before his CO registration was ultimately agreed.[32] He had a small part in the ChristmaspantomimeDick Whittington and His Cat at the Chesterfield Hippodrome in 1949 to 1950.[33] From January to July 1951, he attended theCentral School of Speech and Drama.[34]
From 1951 to 1952, he toured Ireland with theAnew McMaster repertory company, playing over a dozen roles.[35] In 1952, he began acting in regional English repertory productions; from 1953 to 1954, he worked for theDonald Wolfit Company, at the King's Theatre,Hammersmith, performing eight roles.[36][37] From 1954 until 1959, Pinter acted under the stage name David Baron.[38][39] In all, Pinter played over 20 roles under that name.[39][40] To supplement his income from acting, Pinter worked as a waiter, a postman, a bouncer, and a snow-clearer, meanwhile, according to Mark Batty, "harbouring ambitions as a poet and writer."[41] In October 1989 Pinter recalled: "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."[42] During that period, he also performed occasional roles in his own and others' works for radio, TV, and film, as he continued to do throughout his career.[39][43]
From 1956 until 1980, Pinter was married toVivien Merchant, an actress whom he met on tour,[44] perhaps best known for her performance in the 1966 filmAlfie. Their son Daniel was born in 1958.[45] Through the early 1970s, Merchant appeared in many of Pinter's works, includingThe Homecoming on stage (1965) and screen (1973), but the marriage was turbulent.[46] For seven years, from 1962 to 1969, Pinter was engaged in a clandestine affair with BBC-TV presenter and journalistJoan Bakewell, which inspired his 1978 playBetrayal,[47] and also throughout that period and beyond he had an affair with an American socialite, whom he nicknamed "Cleopatra". This relationship was another secret he kept from both his wife and Bakewell.[48] Initially,Betrayal was thought to be a response to his later affair with historianAntonia Fraser, the wife ofHugh Fraser, and Pinter's "marital crack-up".[49]
Pinter and Merchant had both met Antonia Fraser in 1969, when all three worked together on aNational Gallery programme aboutMary, Queen of Scots; several years later, on 8–9 January 1975, Pinter and Fraser became romantically involved.[50] That meeting initiated their five-year extramarital love affair.[51][52] After hiding the relationship from Merchant for two and a half months, on 21 March 1975, Pinter finally told her "I've met somebody".[53] After that, "Life in Hanover Terrace gradually became impossible", and Pinter moved out of their house on 28 April 1975, five days after the première ofNo Man's Land.[54][55]
In mid-August 1977, after Pinter and Fraser had spent two years living in borrowed and rented quarters, they moved into her former family home inHolland Park,[56] where Pinter began writingBetrayal.[49] He reworked it later, while on holiday at theGrand Hotel inEastbourne, in early January 1978.[57] After the Frasers' divorce had become final in 1977 and the Pinters' in 1980, Pinter married Fraser on 27 November 1980.[58] Because of a two-week delay in Merchant's signing the divorce papers, however, the reception had to precede the actual ceremony, originally scheduled to occur on his 50th birthday.[59] Vivien Merchant died of acute alcoholism in the first week of October 1982, at the age of 53.[60][61] Billington writes that Pinter "did everything possible to support" her and regretted that he ultimately became estranged from their son, Daniel, after their separation, Pinter's remarriage, and Merchant's death.[62]
A reclusive gifted musician and writer, Daniel changed his surname from Pinter to Brand, the maiden name of his maternal grandmother,[63] before Pinter and Fraser became romantically involved; while according to Fraser, his father could not understand it, she says that she could: "Pinter is such a distinctive name that he must have got tired of being asked, 'Any relation?'"[64] Michael Billington wrote that Pinter saw Daniel's name change as "a largely pragmatic move on Daniel's part designed to keep the press ... at bay."[65] Fraser told Billington that Daniel "was very nice to me at a time when it would have been only too easy for him to have turned on me ... simply because he had been the sole focus of his father's love and now manifestly wasn't."[65] Still unreconciled at the time of his father's death, Daniel Brand did not attend Pinter's funeral.[66]
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," though he adds that Fraser herself did not claim to have influence over Pinter or his writing.[63] In her own contemporaneous diary entry dated 15 January 1993, Fraser described herself more as Pinter's literary midwife.[67] Indeed, she told Billington that "other people [such asPeggy Ashcroft, among others] had a shaping influence on [Pinter's] politics" and attributed changes in his writing and political views to a 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 afterNo Man's Land [1975], which was a very bleak play."[63]
Pinter was content in his second marriage and enjoyed family life with his six adult stepchildren and 17 step-grandchildren.[68] Even after battling cancer for several years, he considered himself "a very lucky man in every respect".[69]Sarah Lyall notes in her 2007 interview with Pinter inThe New York Times that his "latest work, a slim pamphlet called 'Six Poems for A.', comprises poems written over 32 years, with "A" of course being Lady Antonia. The first of the poems was written in Paris, where she and Mr. Pinter traveled soon after they met. More than three decades later the two are rarely apart, and Mr. Pinter turns soft, even cozy, when he talks about his wife."[24] In that interview 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.'"[24] After his death, Fraser toldThe Guardian: "He was a great man, and it was a privilege to live with him for over 33 years. He will never be forgotten."[70][71]
In 1948–49, when he was 18, Pinter opposed the politics of theCold War, leading to his decision to become aconscientious objector and to refuse to comply withNational Service in the British military. However, he told interviewers that, if he had been old enough at the time, he would have fought against theNazis inWorld War II.[72] He seemed to express ambivalence, both indifference and hostility, towards political structures and politicians in his Fall 1966Paris Review interview conducted byLawrence M. Bensky.[73] Yet, he had been an early member of theCampaign for Nuclear Disarmament and also had supported the BritishAnti-Apartheid Movement (1959–1994), participating in British artists' refusal to permit professional productions of their work in South Africa in 1963 and in subsequent related campaigns.[74][75][76] In "A Play and Its Politics", a 1985 interview with Nicholas Hern, Pinter described his earlier plays retrospectively from the perspective of the politics of power and the dynamics of oppression.[77]
In his last 25 years, Pinter increasingly focused his essays, interviews and public appearances directly on political issues. He was an officer inInternational PEN, travelling with American playwrightArthur Miller toTurkey in 1985 on a mission co-sponsored with aHelsinki Watch committee to investigate and protest against the torture of imprisoned writers. There he met victims of political oppression and their families. Pinter's experiences in Turkey and his knowledge of the Turkish suppression of theKurdish language inspired his 1988 playMountain Language.[78] He was also an active member of theCuba Solidarity Campaign, an organisation that "campaigns in the UK against the US blockade ofCuba".[79] In 2001, Pinter joined the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milošević (ICDSM), which appealed for a fair trial and for the freedom ofSlobodan Milošević, signing a related "Artists' Appeal for Milošević" in 2004.[80]
Pinter strongly opposed the 1991Gulf War, the 1999NATO bombing campaign inFR Yugoslavia during theKosovo War, the United States' 2001War in Afghanistan, and the2003 Invasion of Iraq. Among his provocative political statements, Pinter called Prime MinisterTony Blair a "deluded idiot" and compared the administration of PresidentGeorge W. Bush toNazi Germany.[80][81] He stated that the United States "was charging towards world domination while the American public and Britain's 'mass-murdering' prime minister sat back and watched."[81] He was very active in theantiwar movement in the United Kingdom, speaking at rallies held by theStop the War Coalition[82] and frequently criticising American aggression, as when he asked rhetorically, in his acceptance speech for theWilfred Owen Award for Poetry on 18 March 2007: "What would Wilfred Owen make of theinvasion of Iraq? A bandit act, an act of blatantstate terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the conception ofinternational law."[83][84][85]
Pinter earned a reputation for being pugnacious, enigmatic, taciturn, terse, prickly, explosive and forbidding.[86] Pinter's blunt political statements, and the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature, elicited strong criticism and even, at times, provoked ridicule and personal attacks.[87] The historianGeoffrey Alderman, author of the official history of Hackney Downs School, expressed his own "Jewish View" of Harold Pinter: "Whatever his merit as a writer, actor and director, on an ethical plane Harold Pinter seems to me to have been intensely flawed, and his moral compass deeply fractured."[88]David Edgar, writing inThe Guardian, defended Pinter against what he termed Pinter's "being berated by the belligerati" likeJohann Hari, who felt that he did not "deserve" to win the Nobel Prize.[89][90] Later Pinter continued to campaign against the Iraq War and on behalf of other political causes that he supported.
Pinter signed the mission statement ofJews for Justice for Palestinians in 2005 and its full-page advertisement, "What Is Israel Doing? A Call by Jews in Britain", published inThe Times on 6 July 2006,[88] and he was a patron of thePalestine Festival of Literature. In April 2008, Pinter signed the statement "We're not celebrating Israel's anniversary". The statement noted: "We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land.", "We will celebrate when Arab and Jew live as equals in a peaceful Middle East"[91]
Pinter's acting career spanned over 50 years and, although he often playedvillains, included a wide range of roles on stage and in radio, film, and television.[36][92] In addition to roles in radio and television adaptations of his own plays and dramatic sketches, early in his screenwriting career he made several cameo appearances in films based on his own screenplays; for example, as a society man inThe Servant (1963) and as Mr. Bell inAccident (1967), both directed byJoseph Losey; and as a bookshop customer in his later filmTurtle Diary (1985), starringMichael Gambon,Glenda Jackson, andBen Kingsley.[36]
Pinter began to direct more frequently during the 1970s, becoming an associate director of theNational Theatre (NT) in 1973.[94] He directed almost 50 productions of his own and others' plays for stage, film, and television, including 10 productions of works bySimon Gray: the stage and/or film premières ofButley (stage, 1971; film, 1974),Otherwise Engaged (1975),The Rear Column (stage, 1978; TV, 1980),Close of Play (NT, 1979),Quartermaine's Terms (1981),Life Support (1997),The Late Middle Classes (1999), andThe Old Masters (2004).[44] Several of those productions starredAlan Bates (1934–2003), who originated the stage and screen roles of not only Butley but also Mick in Pinter's first major commercial success,The Caretaker (stage, 1960; film, 1964); and in Pinter's double-bill produced at theLyric Hammersmith in 1984, he played Nicolas inOne for the Road and the cab driver inVictoria Station.[95] Among over 35 plays that Pinter directed wereNext of Kin (1974), byJohn Hopkins;Blithe Spirit (1976), byNoël Coward;The Innocents (1976), byWilliam Archibald;Circe and Bravo (1986), byDonald Freed;Taking Sides (1995), byRonald Harwood; andTwelve Angry Men (1996), byReginald Rose.[94][96]
As playwright
Pinter was the author of 29 plays and 15 dramatic sketches and the co-author of two works for stage and radio.[97] He was considered to have been one of the most influential modern British dramatists,[98][99] Along with the 1967Tony Award for Best Play forThe Homecoming and several other American awards and award nominations, he and his plays received many awards in the UK and elsewhere throughout the world.[100] His style has entered the English language as an adjective, "Pinteresque", although Pinter himself disliked the term and found it meaningless.[101]
"Comedies of menace" (1957–1968)
Pinter's first play,The Room, written and first performed in 1957, was a student production at theUniversity of Bristol, directed by his good friend, actorHenry Woolf, who also originated the role of Mr. Kidd (which he reprised in 2001 and 2007).[97] After Woolf mentioned that he had an idea for a play, he asked Pinter to write it so that he could direct it to fulfill a requirement for his postgraduate work.[102] Pinter wrote it in three days.[103] The production was described by Billington as "a staggeringly confident debut which attracted the attention of a young producer,Michael Codron, who decided to present Pinter's next play,The Birthday Party, at theLyric Hammersmith, in 1958."[104]
Written in 1957 and produced in 1958, Pinter's second play,The Birthday Party, one of his best-known works, was initially both a commercial and critical disaster, despite an enthusiastic review inThe Sunday Times by its influential drama criticHarold Hobson,[105] which appeared only after the production had closed and could not be reprieved.[104][106] Critical accounts often quote Hobson:
I am well aware that Mr Pinter[']s play received extremely bad notices last Tuesday morning. At the moment I write these [words] it is uncertain even whether the play will still be in the bill by the time they appear, though it is probable it will soon be seen elsewhere. Deliberately, I am willing to risk whatever reputation I have as a judge of plays by saying thatThe Birthday Party is not a Fourth, not even a Second, but a First [as in Class Honours]; and that Pinter, on the evidence of his work, possesses the most original, disturbing and arresting talent in theatrical London ... Mr Pinter andThe Birthday Party, despite their experiences last week, will be heard of again. Make a note of their names.
Pinter himself and later critics generally credited Hobson as bolstering him and perhaps even rescuing his career.[107]
In a review published in 1958, borrowing from the subtitle ofThe Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace, a play byDavid Campton, criticIrving Wardle called Pinter's early plays "comedy of menace"—a label that people have applied repeatedly to his work.[108] Such plays begin with an apparently innocent situation that becomes both threatening and "absurd" as Pinter's characters behave in ways often perceived as inexplicable by his audiences and one another. Pinter acknowledges the influence ofSamuel Beckett, particularly on his early work; they became friends, sending each other drafts of their works in progress for comments.[101][109]
Pinter wroteThe Hothouse in 1958, which he shelved for over 20 years (See "Overtly political plays and sketches" below). Next he wroteThe Dumb Waiter (1959), which premièred in Germany and was then produced in adouble bill withThe Room at theHampstead Theatre Club, in London, in 1960.[97] It was then not produced often until the 1980s, and it has been revived more frequently since 2000, including theWest EndTrafalgar Studios production in 2007. The first production ofThe Caretaker, at theArts Theatre Club, in London, in 1960, established Pinter's theatrical reputation.[110] The play transferred to theDuchess Theatre in May 1960 and ran for 444 performances,[111] receiving anEvening Standard Award for best play of 1960.[112] Large radio and television audiences for his one-act playA Night Out, along with the popularity of his revue sketches, propelled him to further critical attention.[113] In 1964,The Birthday Party was revived both on television (with Pinter himself in the role of Goldberg) and on stage (directed by Pinter at theAldwych Theatre) and was well received.[114]
By the time Peter Hall's London production ofThe Homecoming (1964) reachedBroadway in 1967, Pinter had become a celebrity playwright, and the play garnered fourTony Awards, among other awards.[115] During this period, Pinter also wrote the radio playA Slight Ache, first broadcast on theBBC Third Programme in 1959 and then adapted to the stage and performed at theArts Theatre Club in 1961.A Night Out (1960) was broadcast to a large audience onABC Weekend TV's television showArmchair Theatre, after being transmitted on BBC Radio 3, also in 1960. His playNight School was first televised in 1960 onAssociated Rediffusion.The Collection premièred at theAldwych Theatre in 1962, andThe Dwarfs, adapted from Pinter's then unpublished novel of the same title, was first broadcast on radio in 1960, then adapted for the stage (also at the Arts Theatre Club) in a double bill withThe Lover, which had previously been televised by Associated Rediffusion in 1963; andTea Party, a play that Pinter developed from his 1963 short story, first broadcast onBBC TV in 1965.[97]
Working as both a screenwriter and as a playwright, Pinter composed a script calledThe Compartment (1966), for a trilogy of films to be contributed bySamuel Beckett,Eugène Ionesco, and Pinter, of which only Beckett's film, titledFilm, was actually produced. Then Pinter turned his unfilmed script into a television play, which was produced asThe Basement, both onBBC 2 and also on stage in 1968.[116]
"Memory plays" (1968–1982)
From the late 1960s through the early 1980s, Pinter wrote a series of plays and sketches that explore complex ambiguities, elegiac mysteries, comic vagaries, and other "quicksand-like" characteristics ofmemory and which critics sometimes classify as Pinter's "memory plays".[117] These includeLandscape (1968),Silence (1969),Night (1969),Old Times (1971),No Man's Land (1975),The Proust Screenplay (1977),Betrayal (1978),Family Voices (1981),Victoria Station (1982), andA Kind of Alaska (1982). Some of Pinter's later plays, includingParty Time (1991),Moonlight (1993),Ashes to Ashes (1996), andCelebration (2000), draw upon some features of his "memory"dramaturgy in their focus on the past in the present, but they have personal and political resonances and other tonal differences from these earlier memory plays.[117][118]
Overtly political plays and sketches (1980–2000)
Following a three-year period of creative drought in the early 1980s after his marriage to Antonia Fraser and the death of Vivien Merchant,[119] Pinter's plays tended to become shorter and more overtly political, serving as critiques ofoppression,torture, and other abuses of human rights,[120] linked by the apparent "invulnerability of power."[121] Just before this hiatus, in 1979, Pinter re-discovered his manuscript ofThe Hothouse, which he had written in 1958 but had set aside; he revised it and then directed its first production himself atHampstead Theatre in London, in 1980.[122] Like his plays of the 1980s,The Hothouse concerns authoritarianism and the abuses of power politics, but it is also a comedy, like his earliercomedies of menace. Pinter played the major role of Roote in a 1995 revival at theMinerva Theatre, Chichester.[123]
Pinter's brief dramatic sketchPrecisely (1983) is a duologue between two bureaucrats exploring the absurd power politics of mutual nuclear annihilation anddeterrence. His first overtly political one-act play isOne for the Road (1984). In 1985 Pinter stated that whereas his earlier plays presented metaphors for power and powerlessness, the later ones present literal realities of power and its abuse.[124] Pinter's "political theatre dramatizes the interplay and conflict of the opposing poles of involvement and disengagement."[125]Mountain Language (1988) is about the Turkish suppression of theKurdish language.[78] The dramatic sketchThe New World Order (1991) provides what Robert Cushman, writing inThe Independent described as "10 nerve-wracking minutes" of two men threatening to torture a third man who is blindfolded, gagged and bound in a chair; Pinter directed the British première at theRoyal Court Theatre Upstairs, where it opened on 9 July 1991, and the production then transferred to Washington, D.C., where it was revived in 1994.[126] Pinter's longerpolitical satireParty Time (1991) premièred at theAlmeida Theatre in London, in a double-bill withMountain Language. Pinter adapted it as a screenplay for television in 1992, directing that production, first broadcast in the UK onChannel 4 on 17 November 1992.[127]
Intertwining political and personal concerns, his next full-length plays,Moonlight (1993) andAshes to Ashes (1996) are set in domestic households and focus on dying and death; in their personal conversations inAshes to Ashes, Devlin and Rebecca allude to unspecified atrocities relating to theHolocaust.[128] After experiencing the deaths of first his mother (1992) and then his father (1997), again merging the personal and the political, Pinter wrote the poems "Death" (1997) and "The Disappeared" (1998).
Pinter's last stage play,Celebration (2000), is a social satire set in an opulent restaurant, which lampoonsThe Ivy, a fashionable venue in London's West End theatre district, and its patrons who "have just come from performances of either the ballet or the opera. Not that they can remember a darn thing about what they saw, including the titles. [These] gilded, foul-mouthed souls are just as myopic when it comes to their own table mates (and for that matter, their food), with conversations that usually connect only on the surface, if there."[129] On its surface the play may appear to have fewer overtly political resonances than some of the plays from the 1980s and 1990s; but its central male characters, brothers named Lambert and Matt, are members of the elite (like the men in charge inParty Time), who describe themselves as "peaceful strategy consultants [because] we don't carry guns."[130] At the next table, Russell, a banker, describes himself as a "totally disordered personality ... a psychopath",[131] while Lambert "vows to be reincarnated as '[a] more civilised, [a] gentler person, [a] nicer person'."[132][133] These characters' deceptively smooth exteriors mask their extreme viciousness.Celebration evokes familiarPinteresque political contexts: "The ritzy loudmouths in 'Celebration' ... and the quieter working-class mumblers of 'The Room' ... have everything in common beneath the surface".[129] "Money remains in the service of entrenched power, and the brothers in the play are 'strategy consultants' whose jobs involve force and violence ... It is tempting but inaccurate to equate the comic power inversions of the social behaviour inCelebration with lasting change in larger political structures", according to Grimes, for whom the play indicates Pinter's pessimism about the possibility of changing the status quo.[134] Yet, as the Waiter's often comically unbelievable reminiscences about his grandfather demonstrate inCelebration, Pinter's final stage plays also extend someexpressionistic aspects of his earlier "memory plays", while harking back to his "comedies of menace", as illustrated in the characters and in the Waiter's final speech:
My grandfather introduced me to the mystery of life and I'm still in the middle of it. I can't find the door to get out. My grandfather got out of it. He got right out of it. He left it behind him and he didn't look back. He got that absolutely right. And I'd like to make one further interjection. He stands still. Slow fade.[135]
LikeCelebration, Pinter's penultimate sketch,Press Conference (2002), "invokes both torture and the fragile, circumscribed existence of dissent".[136] In its première in theNational Theatre's two-part production ofSketches, despite undergoing chemotherapy at the time, Pinter played the ruthless Minister willing to murder little children for the benefit of "The State".[137]
His commissioned screenplays of others' works for the filmsThe Handmaid's Tale (1990),The Remains of the Day (1990), andLolita (1997), remain unpublished and in the case of the latter two films, uncredited, though several scenes from or aspects of his scripts were used in these finished films.[141] His screenplaysThe Proust Screenplay (1972),Victory (1982), andThe Dreaming Child (1997) and his unpublished screenplayThe Tragedy of King Lear (2000) have not been filmed.[142] A section of Pinter'sProust Screenplay was, however, released as the 1984 filmSwann in Love (Un amour de Swann), directed byVolker Schlöndorff, and it was also adapted byMichael Bakewell as a two-hour radio drama broadcast onBBC Radio 3 in 1995,[143] before Pinter and director Di Trevis collaborated to adapt it for the 2000 National Theatre production.[144]
From 16 to 31 July 2001, a Harold Pinter Festival celebrating his work, curated byMichael Colgan, artistic director of theGate Theatre, Dublin, was held as part of the annual Lincoln Center Festival atLincoln Center in New York City. Pinter participated both as an actor, as Nicolas inOne for the Road, and as a director of a double bill pairing his last play,Celebration, with his first play,The Room.[148] As part of a two-week "Harold Pinter Homage" at the World Leaders Festival of Creative Genius, held from 24 September to 30 October 2001, at the Harbourfront Centre, in Toronto, Canada, Pinter presented a dramatic reading ofCelebration (2000) and also participated in a public interview as part of theInternational Festival of Authors.[149][150][151]
In December 2001, Pinter was diagnosed withoesophageal cancer, for which, in 2002, he underwent an operation andchemotherapy.[152] During the course of his treatment, he directed a production of his playNo Man's Land, and wrote and performed in a new sketch, "Press Conference", for a production of his dramatic sketches at the National Theatre, and from 2002 on he was increasingly active in political causes, writing and presenting politically charged poetry, essays, speeches, as well as involved in developing his final two screenplay adaptations,The Tragedy of King Lear andSleuth, whose drafts are in the British Library'sHarold Pinter Archive (Add MS 88880/2).[153]
From 9 to 25 January 2003, the Manitoba Theatre Centre, inManitoba, Canada, held a nearly month-longPinterFest, in which over 130 performances of twelve of Pinter's plays were performed by a dozen different theatre companies.[154] Productions during the Festival included:The Hothouse,Night School,The Lover,The Dumb Waiter,The Homecoming,The Birthday Party,Monologue,One for the Road,The Caretaker,Ashes to Ashes,Celebration, andNo Man's Land.[155]
Pinter in 2005
In 2005, Pinter stated that he had stopped writing plays and that he would be devoting his efforts more to his political activism and writing poetry: "I think I've written 29 plays. I think it's enough for me ... 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."[156][157] Some of this later poetry included "The 'Special Relationship'", "Laughter", and "The Watcher".
From 2005, Pinter experienced ill health, including a rare skin disease calledpemphigus[158] and "a form ofsepticaemia that afflict[ed] his feet and made it difficult for him to walk."[159] Yet, he completed his screenplay for the film ofSleuth in 2005.[24][160] His last dramatic work for radio,Voices (2005), a collaboration with composerJames Clarke, adapting selected works by Pinter to music, premièred onBBC Radio 3 on his 75th birthday on 10 October 2005.[161] Three days later, it was announced that he had won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature.[162]
In an interview with Pinter in 2006, conducted by critic Michael Billington as part of the cultural programme of the2006 Winter Olympics inTurin, Italy, Pinter confirmed that he would continue to write poetry but not plays.[158] In response, the audience shoutedNo in unison, urging him to keep writing.[163] Along with the international symposium on Pinter: Passion, Poetry, Politics, curated by Billington, the 2006Europe Theatre Prize theatrical events celebrating Pinter included new productions (in French) ofPrecisely (1983),One for the Road (1984),Mountain Language (1988),The New World Order (1991),Party Time (1991), andPress Conference (2002) (French versions by Jean Pavans); andPinter Plays, Poetry & Prose, an evening of dramatic readings, directed byAlan Stanford, of theGate Theatre, Dublin.[164] In June 2006, theBritish Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) hosted a celebration of Pinter's films curated by his friend, the playwrightDavid Hare. Hare introduced the selection of film clips by saying: "To jump back into the world of Pinter's movies ... is to remind yourself of a literate mainstream cinema, focused as much asBergman's is on the human face, in which tension is maintained by a carefully crafted mix of image and dialogue."[165]
After returning to London from theEdinburgh International Book Festival, in September 2006, Pinter began rehearsing for his performance of the role ofKrapp inSamuel Beckett's one-actmonologueKrapp's Last Tape, which he performed from a motorised wheelchair in a limited run the following month at theRoyal Court Theatre to sold-out audiences and "ecstatic" critical reviews.[166] The production ran for only nine performances, as part of the 50th-anniversary celebration season of theRoyal Court Theatre; it sold out within minutes of the opening of the box office and tickets commanded large sums fromticket resellers.[167] One performance was filmed and broadcast onBBC Four on 21 June 2007, and also screened later, as part of the memorial PEN Tribute to Pinter, in New York, on 2 May 2009.[168]
In October and November 2006,Sheffield Theatres hostedPinter: A Celebration. It featured productions of seven of Pinter's plays:The Caretaker,Voices,No Man's Land,Family Voices,Tea Party,The Room,One for the Road, andThe Dumb Waiter; and films (most his screenplays; some in which Pinter appears as an actor).[169]
In February and March 2007, a 50th anniversary ofThe Dumb Waiter, was produced at theTrafalgar Studios. Later in February 2007,John Crowley's film version of Pinter's playCelebration (2000) was shown onMore4 (Channel 4, UK). On 18 March 2007,BBC Radio 3 broadcast a new radio production ofThe Homecoming, directed byThea Sharrock 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). A revival ofThe Hothouse opened at the National Theatre, in London, in July 2007, concurrently with a revival ofBetrayal at theDonmar Warehouse, directed byRoger Michell.[170]
Revivals in 2008 included the 40th-anniversary production of the American première ofThe Homecoming on Broadway, directed byDaniel J. Sullivan.[171] From 8 to 24 May 2008, theLyric Hammersmith celebrated the 50th anniversary ofThe Birthday Party with a revival and related events, including a gala performance and reception hosted by Harold Pinter on 19 May 2008, exactly 50 years after its London première there. The final revival during Pinter's lifetime was a production ofNo Man's Land, directed byRupert Goold, opening at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in August 2008, and then transferring to theDuke of York's Theatre, London, where it played until 3 January 2009.[172] On the Monday before Christmas 2008, Pinter was admitted toHammersmith Hospital, where he died on Christmas Eve from liver cancer, aged 78.[173]
On 26 December 2008, whenNo Man's Land reopened at the Duke of York's, the actors paid tribute to Pinter from the stage, with Michael Gambon reading Hirst's monologue about his "photograph album" from Act Two that Pinter had asked him to read at his funeral, ending with a standing ovation from the audience, many of whom were in tears:
I might even show you my photograph album. You might even see a face in it which might remind you of your own, of what you once were. You might see faces of others, in shadow, or cheeks of others, turning, or jaws, or backs of necks, or eyes, dark under hats, which might remind you of others, whom once you knew, whom you thought long dead, but from whom you will still receive a sidelong glance if you can face the good ghost. Allow the love of the good ghost. They possess all that emotion ... trapped. Bow to it. It will assuredly never release them, but who knows ... what relief ... it may give them ... who knows how they may quicken ... in their chains, in their glass jars. You think it cruel ... to quicken them, when they are fixed, imprisoned? No ... no. Deeply, deeply, they wish to respond to your touch, to your look, and when you smile, their joy ... is unbounded. And so I say to you, tender the dead, as you would yourself be tendered, now, in what you would describe as your life.[173][174][175]
Pinter's funeral was a private, half-hour secular ceremony conducted at the graveside atKensal Green Cemetery, 31 December 2008. The eight readings selected in advance by Pinter included passages from seven of his own writings and from the story "The Dead", byJames Joyce, which was read by actressPenelope Wilton.Michael Gambon read the "photo album" speech fromNo Man's Land and three other readings, including Pinter's poem "Death" (1997). Other readings honoured Pinter's widow and his love of cricket.[173] The ceremony was attended by many notable theatre people, includingTom Stoppard, but not by Pinter's son, Daniel Brand. At its end, Pinter's widow, Antonia Fraser, stepped forward to his grave and quoted fromHoratio's speech after the death ofHamlet: "Goodnight, sweet prince, / And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."[173]
Memorial tributes
The night before Pinter's burial, theatre marquees on Broadway dimmed their lights for a minute in tribute,[176] and on the final night ofNo Man's Land at the Duke of York's Theatre on 3 January 2009, all of theAmbassador Theatre Group in the West End dimmed their lights for an hour to honour the playwright.[177]
On 16 June 2009, Antonia Fraser officially opened a commemorative room at theHackney Empire. The theatre also established a writer's residency in Pinter's name.[182] Most of issue number 28 ofCraig Raine's Arts Tri-QuarterlyAreté was devoted to pieces remembering Pinter, beginning with Pinter's 1987 unpublished love poem dedicated "To Antonia" and his poem "Paris", written in 1975 (the year in which he and Fraser began living together), followed by brief memoirs by some of Pinter's associates and friends, includingPatrick Marber,Nina Raine,Tom Stoppard,Peter Nichols,Susanna Gross,Richard Eyre, and David Hare.[183]
A memorial cricket match atLord's Cricket Ground between the Gaieties Cricket Club and the Lord's Taverners, followed by performances of Pinter's poems and excerpts from his plays, took place on 27 September 2009.[184]
In 2009,English PEN established thePEN Pinter Prize, which is awarded annually to a British writer or a writer resident in Britain who, in the words of Pinter's Nobel speech, casts an 'unflinching, unswerving' gaze upon the world, and shows a 'fierce intellectual determination ... to define the real truth of our lives and our societies'. The prize is shared with an international writer of courage. The inaugural winners of the prize wereTony Harrison and the Burmese poet and comedianMaung Thura (a.k.a. Zarganar).[185]
Being Harold Pinter
In January 2011Being Harold Pinter, a theatrical collage of excerpts from Pinter's dramatic works, his Nobel Lecture, and letters of Belarusian prisoners, created and performed by theBelarus Free Theatre, evoked a great deal of attention in thepublic media. The Free Theatre's members had to be smuggled out ofMinsk, owing to a government crackdown on dissident artists, to perform their production in a two-week sold-out engagement atLa MaMa in New York as part of the 2011Under the Radar Festival. In an additional sold-out benefit performance at thePublic Theater, co-hosted by playwrightsTony Kushner andTom Stoppard, the prisoner's letters were read by ten guest performers:Mandy Patinkin,Kevin Kline,Olympia Dukakis,Lily Rabe,Linda Emond,Josh Hamilton,Stephen Spinella,Lou Reed,Laurie Anderson, andPhilip Seymour Hoffman.[186] In solidarity with the Belarus Free Theatre, collaborations of actors and theatre companies joined in offering additional benefit readings ofBeing Harold Pinter across the United States.[187]
The Harold Pinter Theatre, London
In September 2011, British Theatre owners,Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG) announced it was renaming itsComedy Theatre, Panton Street, London to becomeTheHarold Pinter Theatre.Howard Panter, Joint CEO and Creative Director of ATG told theBBC, "The work of Pinter has become an integral part of the history of the Comedy Theatre. The re-naming of one of our most successful West End theatres is a fitting tribute to a man who made such a mark on British theatre who, over his 50 year career, became recognised as one of the most influential modern British dramatists."[188]
An Honorary Associate of theNational Secular Society, a Fellow of theRoyal Society of Literature, and an Honorary Fellow of theModern Language Association of America (1970),[189][190] Pinter was appointedCBE in 1966[191] and became aMember of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 2002, having declined a knighthood in 1996.[192] In 1995, he accepted theDavid Cohen Prize, in recognition of a lifetime of literary achievement. In 1996, he received aLaurence Olivier Special Award for lifetime achievement in the theatre.[193] In 1997 he became aBAFTA Fellow.[194] He received the World Leaders Award for "Creative Genius" as the subject of a week-long "Homage" in Toronto, in October 2001.[195] In 2004, he received theWilfred Owen Award for Poetry for his "lifelong contribution to literature, 'and specifically for his collection of poetry entitledWar, published in 2003'".[196] In March 2006, he was awarded theEurope Theatre Prize in recognition of lifetime achievements pertaining to drama and theatre.[197] In conjunction with that award, the critic Michael Billington coordinated an international conference on Pinter: Passion, Poetry, Politics, including scholars and critics from Europe and the Americas, held inTurin, Italy, from 10 to 14 March 2006.[117][164][198]
In October 2008, theCentral School of Speech and Drama announced that Pinter had agreed to become its president and awarded him anhonorary fellowship at its graduation ceremony.[199] 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."[200] But he had to receive that honorary degree, his 20th, in absentia owing to ill health.[199] His presidency of the school was brief; he died just two weeks after the graduation ceremony, on 24 December 2008.
On 18 January 2007, French Prime MinisterDominique de Villepin presented Pinter with France's highest civil honour, theLégion d'honneur, at a ceremony at the French embassy in London. De Villepin praised Pinter's poem "American Football" (1991) stating: "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 response, Pinter praised France's 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".[203][204] 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".[203]
Some scholars and critics challenge the validity of Pinter's critiques of what he terms "the modes of thinking of those in power"[205] or dissent from his retrospective viewpoints on his own work.[206] In 1985, Pinter recalled that his early act of conscientious objection resulted from being "terribly disturbed as a young man by the Cold War. And McCarthyism ... A profound hypocrisy. 'They' the monsters, 'we' the good. In 1948, the Russian suppression of Eastern Europe was an obvious and brutal fact, but I felt very strongly then and feel as strongly now that we have an obligation to subject our own actions and attitudes to an equivalent critical and moral scrutiny."[207] Scholars agree that Pinter's dramatic rendering of power relations results from this scrutiny.[208]
Pinter's aversion to any censorship by "the authorities" is epitomised in Petey's line at the end ofThe Birthday Party. As the broken-down and reconstituted Stanley is being carted off by the figures of authority Goldberg and McCann, Petey calls after him, "Stan, don't let them tell you what to do!" Pinter told Gussow in 1988, "I've lived that line all my damn life. Never more than now."[209] The example of Pinter's stalwart opposition to what he termed "the modes of thinking of those in power"—the "brick wall" of the "minds" perpetuating the "status quo"[210]—infused the "vast political pessimism" that some academic critics may perceive in his artistic work,[211] its "drowning landscape" of harsh contemporary realities, with some residual "hope for restoring the dignity of man."[212]
As Pinter's long-time friend David Jones reminded analytically inclined scholars and dramatic critics, Pinter was one of the "great comic writers":[213]
The trap with Harold's work, for performers and audiences, is to approach it too earnestly or portentously. I have always tried to interpret his plays with as much humour and humanity as possible. There is always mischief lurking in the darkest corners. The world ofThe Caretaker is a bleak one, its characters damaged and lonely. But they are all going to survive. And in their dance to that end they show a frenetic vitality and a wry sense of the ridiculous that balance heartache and laughter. Funny, but not too funny. As Pinter wrote, back in 1960: "As far as I am concernedThe Caretaker IS funny, up to a point. Beyond that point, it ceases to be funny, and it is because of that point that I wrote it."[214]
His dramatic conflicts present serious implications for his characters and his audiences, leading to sustained inquiry about "the point" of his work and multiple "critical strategies" for developing interpretations and stylistic analyses of it.[215]
^A collection of Pinter's correspondence with Brearley is held in theHarold Pinter Archive in the British Library. Pinter's memorial epistolary poem "Joseph Brearley 1909–1977 (Teacher of English)", published in his collectionVarious Voices (177), ends with the following stanza: "You're gone. I'm at your side,/Walking with you fromClapton Pond toFinsbury Park,/And on, and on."
^See also "Introduction by Harold Pinter,Nobel Laureate", 7–9 in Watkins, ed., 'Fortune's Fool': The Man Who Taught Harold Pinter: A Life of Joe Brearley.
^"The Meeting is a about the afterlife, despite Pinter being well known as an atheist. He admitted it was a "strange" piece for him to have written." Pinter 'on road to recovery', BBC.co.uk, 26 August 2002.
^abcdeBatty, Mark (ed.)."Acting".haroldpinter.org. Archived fromthe original on 9 July 2011. Retrieved29 January 2011.
^Billington,Harold Pinter 20–25, 31, 36, and 37–41.
^Billington,Harold Pinter 3 and 47–48. Pinter's paternal grandmother's maiden name was Baron. He also used the name for an autobiographical character in the first draft of his novelThe Dwarfs.
^Fraser, Chap. 1: "First Night",Must You Go? 3–19.
^Fraser, chap. 1: "First Night"; chap. 2: "Pleasure and a Good Deal of Pain"; chap. 8: "It Is Here"; and chap. 13: "Marriage — Again",Must You Go? 3–33, 113–24, and 188–201.
^Fraser,Must You Go? 211: "With all my timings [ofMoonlight], Harold calls me his editor. Not so. I was the midwife saying, 'Push, Harold, push,' but the act of creation took place elsewhere and the baby would have been born anyway."
^Billington,Harold Pinter 286–305 (chap. 15: "Public Affairs"), 400–03, and 433–41; and Merritt,Pinter in Play 171–209 (chap. 8: "Cultural Politics", espec. "Pinter and Politics").
^Merritt, "Pinter and Politics,"Pinter in Play 171–89.
^abBillington,Harold Pinter 309–10; and Gussow,Conversations with Pinter 67–68.
^Hobson, Harold (25 May 1958). "The Screw Turns Again".The Sunday Times. London.
^Hobson, "The Screw Turns Again"; cited by Merritt in "Sir Harold Hobson: The Promptings of Personal Experience",Pinter in Play 221–25; rpt. inHobson, Harold (2011)."The Birthday Party – Premiere".haroldpinter.org. Archived fromthe original on 9 July 2011. Retrieved27 June 2011.
^Billington,Harold Pinter 85; Gussow,Conversations with Pinter 141.
^See Billington,Harold Pinter 64, 65, 84, 197, 251 and 354
^Jones, David (Fall 2003)."Roundabout Theatre Company –".Front & Center Online. Roundabout Theatre Company. Archived fromthe original on 27 July 2011. Retrieved27 June 2011.
^Staff (2011)."Pinter Archive".Manuscripts catalogue. British Library. Archived fromthe original on 24 November 2011. Retrieved4 May 2011.MS 88880/2
^Batty, Mark, ed. (2003)."Pinter Fest 2003".haroldpinter.org. Archived fromthe original on 13 June 2011. Retrieved29 June 2011.
^Merritt, "PinterFest", in "Forthcoming Publications, Upcoming Productions, and Other Works in Progress", "Harold Pinter Bibliography: 2000–2002" (299).
Hern, Nicholas; Pinter, Harold (February 1985).A Play and Its Politics: A Conversation between Harold Pinter and Nicholas Hern. Harold Pinter, 'One for the Road'. New York: Grove. pp. 5–23.ISBN0-394-62363-0.
Hudgins, Christopher C. (2008). Gillen, Francis; Gale, Steven H. (eds.). "Three Unpublished Harold Pinter Filmscripts".The Pinter Review: Nobel Prize/Europe Theatre Prize Volume: 2005–2008. Tampa: University of Tampa Press:132–39.ISSN0895-9706.OCLC16878624.
Merritt, Susan Hollis (2000). Gillen, Francis; Gale, Steven H. (eds.). "Harold Pinter's 'Ashes to Ashes': Political/Personal Echoes of the Holocaust".The Pinter Review: Collected Essays 1999 and 2000. Tampa: University of Tampa Press:73–84.ISSN0895-9706.OCLC16878624.
Merritt, Susan Hollis (2002). Gillen, Francis; Gale, Steven H. (eds.). "Talking about Pinter: Collected Essays 2001 and 2002".The Pinter Review: Collected Essays: 2003 and 2004. Tampa: University of Tampa Press:144–467.ISSN0895-9706.OCLC16878624.
Merritt, Susan Hollis (2004). Gillen, Francis; Gale, Steven H. (eds.). "Staging Pinter: From Pregnant Pauses to Political Cause".The Pinter Review: Collected Essays: 2003 and 2004. Tampa: University of Tampa Press:123–43.ISSN0895-9706.OCLC16878624.
Münder, Peter (2008). Gillen, Francis; Gale, Steven H. (eds.). "Endgame with Spools: Harold Pinter in 'Krapp's Last Tape'".The Pinter Review: Nobel Prize/Europe Theatre Prize Volume: 2005– 008. Tampa: University of Tampa Press:220–22.ISSN0895-9706.OCLC16878624.
Pinter, Harold (2008). "Introduction by Harold Pinter, Nobel Laureate". In Watkins, G. L. (ed.).Fortune's Fool: The Man Who Taught Harold Pinter: A Life of Joe Brearley. Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, UK: TwigBooks in association with The Clove Club. pp. 7–9.ISBN978-0-9547236-8-2.
Watkins, G. L., ed. (March 2009).The Clove's Lines: The Newsletter of the Clove Club: The Old Boys of Hackney Downs School.3 (2):1–36.{{cite journal}}:Missing or empty|title= (help)
Further reading
Editions
Pinter, Harold.Plays: One |The Birthday Party, The Room, The Dumb Waiter,A Slight Ache, The Hothouse, A Night Out. (London: Methuen, 1983)ISBN0-413-34650-1 Contains an introductory essay,Writing for the Theatre.
Pinter, Harold.Plays: Two |The Caretaker, The Collection, The Lover, Night School, The Dwarfs. (London: Eyre Methuen, 1979)ISBN0-413-37300-2 Contains an introductory essay,Writing for Myself.
Pinter, Harold.Plays: Three |The Homecoming, The Tea Party, The Basement, Landscape, Silence. (London: Eyre Methuen, 1978)ISBN0-413-38480-2
"Harold Pinter" atguardian.co.uk ("The best of The Guardian's coverage, including tributes, reviews and articles from the archive," periodically updated)
"Harold Pinter" in "Times Topics" atnytimes.com (periodically updated collection of news articles, reviews, commentaries, photographs, and Web resources fromThe New York Times )
"Harold Pinter" onThe Mark Shenton Show,TheatreVoice, recorded on 21 February 2007 (critics Michael Billington and Alastair Macaulay reviewPinter's People andThe Dumb Waiter; director and actor Harry Burton talks about his experiences with Pinter)
"Harold Pinter – Interview",British Library Online Gallery: What's On, British Library, 8 September 2008 (Pinter discusses his memories of postwar British theatre with Harry Burton)
