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John William Mills Willett,MBE (24 June 1917 – 20 August 2002) was a Britishtranslator andscholar, who is remembered for translating the work ofBertolt Brecht into English.
Willett was born inHampstead and was educated atWinchester andChrist Church, Oxford. He went on to theManchester College of Art and Dance, and then toVienna, where he studied music (Willett played thecello) andstage design.
Willett began his career as a theatre designer. However, this career was cut short byWorld War II. He served in Intelligence and the Eighth Army, inNorth Africa andItaly. Beginning his war in July 1940 as asecond lieutenant in theBritish Army, he ended it just over five years later as alieutenant colonel.[1] In August 1942 he was transferred to theIntelligence Corps, in April 1944 he wasmentioned in dispatches and in June 1945 he was made aMember of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).[1]
After being demobilised, Willett worked first for theManchester Guardian from 1948 to 1951, and then in 1960 he became the deputy to Arthur Crook, the editor ofThe Times Literary Supplement. Willett remained there until 1967. That year Methuen published hisArt in a City, the result of his study into art in Liverpool, commissioned by the city's Bluecoat Society of Arts. A pioneering sociological study of art in a single city, it was republished in 2007 by the Bluecoat and Liverpool University Press, with a new introduction by the Bluecoat's artistic director Bryan Biggs that set Willett's prescient study in the context of Liverpool's cultural renaissance on the eve of its year as 2008 European Capital of Culture. From 1970 to 1973, he taught at theCalifornia Institute of the Arts as a Bertolt Brecht scholar.
Willett became afreelance writer, an editor and translator, atheatre director and a visiting professor and lecturer. He was respected in academic circles for his patient work and careful research in translation, especially in German culture and politics.
Willett's grandfather wasWilliam Willett, a builder who promotedBritish Summer Time.[2] He has a son, John, who is a architect. From his daughter Alison, he is the great-grandfather ofChris Martin, the lead singer ofColdplay.
Willett's love of Brecht began in the 1930s. Willett first studied Brecht's theatre design work. After the war, Willett became friends with Brecht himself, although it is said that the friendship got off to a bad start due to a disagreement about the Hitler-Stalin pact, but got back on track after they discovered that they were both interested inTacitus.
Willett worked on English translations for many of Brecht's plays, including:
