100-449: Harold Pinter CH CBE ( / ˈ p ɪ n t ər / ; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel 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 include The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964) and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted for
200-531: A BA degree. As a member of Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS), in 1959, Billington played the Priest in The Birds , by Aristophanes , his only appearance as an actor, and, in 1960, he directed a production of Eugène Ionesco 's The Bald Prima Donna , a performance of which was attended by Harold Hobson , the drama critic for The Sunday Times . Although it won "an Oxford drama competition" and
300-467: A New Zealand soprano, was given the award in 2018 and Canadian author Margaret Atwood was given the award in 2019. Sebastian Coe , Baron Coe CH represented the Order at the 2023 Coronation . The insignia of the order is in the form of an oval medallion, surmounted by a royal crown (but, until recently, surmounted by an imperial crown ), and with a rectangular panel within, depicting on it an oak tree,
400-592: A character that Pinter described as "a very civilised man ... a man of great sensibility but in fact, he's upholding and sustaining a totally brutal system [the slave trade] from which he derives his money"; and Uncle Benny, opposite Pierce Brosnan and Geoffrey Rush , in The Tailor of Panama (2001). In television films , he played Mr. Bearing, the father of ovarian cancer patient Vivian Bearing, played by Emma Thompson in Mike Nichols 's HBO film of
500-610: A comedy, like his earlier comedies of menace . Pinter played the major role of Roote in a 1995 revival at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester . Pinter's brief dramatic sketch Precisely (1983) is a duologue between two bureaucrats exploring the absurd power politics of mutual nuclear annihilation and deterrence . His first overtly political one-act play is One for the Road (1984). In 1985 Pinter stated that whereas his earlier plays presented metaphors for power and powerlessness,
600-901: A director his work also includes The Will by Marivaux at the Barbican Conservatory , London, with an ensemble from the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1987; Pinter's The Lover and Strindberg's The Stronger at the Battersea Arts Centre in 1997, and in 2008 at the MacOwan Theatre, Kensington, Pinter's Party Time and Celebration with students from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art . Billington lives in Chiswick , London, with his wife, Jeanine Bradlaugh;
700-590: A drunk Irish journalist in Langrishe, Go Down (starring Judi Dench and Jeremy Irons ) distributed on BBC Two in 1978 and released in movie theatres in 2002. Pinter's later film roles included the criminal Sam Ross in Mojo (1997), written and directed by Jez Butterworth , based on Butterworth's play of the same name ; Sir Thomas Bertram (his most substantial feature-film role) in Mansfield Park (1998),
800-755: A medical examination, before his CO registration was ultimately agreed. He had a small part in the Christmas pantomime Dick Whittington and His Cat at the Chesterfield Hippodrome in 1949 to 1950. From January to July 1951, he attended the Central School of Speech and Drama . From 1951 to 1952, he toured Ireland with the Anew McMaster repertory company, playing over a dozen roles. In 1952, he began acting in regional English repertory productions; from 1953 to 1954, he worked for
900-622: A note of their names. Pinter himself and later critics generally credited Hobson as bolstering him and perhaps even rescuing his career. In a review published in 1958, borrowing from the subtitle of The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace , a play by David Campton , critic Irving Wardle called Pinter's early plays " comedy of menace "—a label that people have applied repeatedly to his work. 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
1000-413: A play that Pinter developed from his 1963 short story, first broadcast on BBC TV in 1965. Working as both a screenwriter and as a playwright, Pinter composed a script called The Compartment (1966), for a trilogy of films to be contributed by Samuel Beckett , Eugène Ionesco , and Pinter, of which only Beckett's film, titled Film , was actually produced. Then Pinter turned his unfilmed script into
1100-577: A play, Woolf asked him to write it so that he could direct it to fulfill a requirement for his postgraduate work. Pinter wrote it in three days. 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 the Lyric Hammersmith , in 1958." Written in 1957 and produced in 1958, Pinter's second play, The Birthday Party , one of his best-known works,
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#17327902588411200-698: A related "Artists' Appeal for Milošević" in 2004. Pinter strongly opposed the 1991 Gulf War , the 1999 NATO bombing campaign in FR Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War , the United States' 2001 War in Afghanistan , and the 2003 Invasion of Iraq . Among his provocative political statements, Pinter called Prime Minister Tony Blair a "deluded idiot" and compared the administration of President George W. Bush to Nazi Germany . He stated that
1300-529: A screenplay for television in 1992, directing that production, first broadcast in the UK on Channel 4 on 17 November 1992. Intertwining political and personal concerns, his next full-length plays, Moonlight (1993) and Ashes to Ashes (1996) are set in domestic households and focus on dying and death; in their personal conversations in Ashes to Ashes , Devlin and Rebecca allude to unspecified atrocities relating to
1400-787: 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 after No Man's Land [1975], which was a very bleak play." Pinter was content in his second marriage and enjoyed family life with his six adult stepchildren and 17 step-grandchildren. Even after battling cancer for several years, he considered himself "a very lucky man in every respect". Sarah Lyall notes in her 2007 interview with Pinter in The New York Times that his "latest work,
1500-661: A shield with the Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom hanging from one branch, and, on the left, a mounted knight in armour. The insignia's blue border bears in gold letters the motto IN ACTION FAITHFUL AND IN HONOUR CLEAR , Alexander Pope 's description (in iambic pentameter ) in his Epistle to Mr Addison of James Craggs the Younger , later used on Craggs's monument in Westminster Abbey . Men wear
1600-492: 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." In that interview Pinter "acknowledged that his plays—full of infidelity, cruelty, inhumanity,
1700-608: A society man in The Servant (1963) and as Mr. Bell in Accident (1967), both directed by Joseph Losey ; and as a bookshop customer in his later film Turtle Diary (1985), starring Michael Gambon , Glenda Jackson , and Ben Kingsley . Pinter's notable film and television roles included the lawyer Saul Abrahams opposite Peter O'Toole in Rogue Male , BBC TV 's 1976 adaptation of Geoffrey Household 's 1939 novel, and
1800-698: A son, Daniel, born in 1958. He left Merchant in 1975 and married author Lady Antonia Fraser in 1980. Pinter's career as a playwright began with a production of The Room in 1957. His second play, The Birthday Party , closed after eight performances but was enthusiastically reviewed by critic Harold Hobson . His early works were described by critics as " comedy of menace ". Later plays such as No Man's Land (1975) and Betrayal (1978) became known as " memory plays ". He 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
1900-407: A student at Hackney 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 almost sacerdotal belief in the power of male friendship. The friends he made in those days – most particularly Henry Woolf , Michael (Mick) Goldstein and Morris (Moishe) Wernick – have always been a vital part of
2000-856: A television play, which was produced as The Basement , both on BBC 2 and also on stage in 1968. 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 of memory and which critics sometimes classify as Pinter's " memory plays ". These include Landscape (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), and A Kind of Alaska (1982). Some of Pinter's later plays, including Party Time (1991), Moonlight (1993), Ashes to Ashes (1996), and Celebration (2000), draw upon some features of his "memory" dramaturgy in their focus on
2100-732: A third man who is blindfolded, gagged and bound in a chair; Pinter directed the British première at the Royal 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. Pinter's longer political satire Party Time (1991) premièred at the Almeida Theatre in London, in a double-bill with Mountain Language . Pinter adapted it as
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#17327902588412200-508: A wicked glint in his eye; testosterone all but flies off the canvas." Pinter approved of the "urban and exacting idea of cricket as a bold theatre of aggression." After his death, several of his school contemporaries recalled his achievements in sports, especially cricket and running. The BBC Radio 4 memorial tribute included an essay on Pinter and cricket. Other interests that Pinter mentioned to interviewers are family, love and sex, drinking, writing, and reading. According to Billington, "If
2300-413: Is such a distinctive name that he must have got tired of being asked, 'Any relation? ' " 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." 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
2400-630: 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 that The 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 and The Birthday Party , despite their experiences last week, will be heard of again. Make
2500-764: The Liverpool Daily Post & Echo . From 1962 to 1964, he served as public liaison officer and director for the Lincoln Theatre Company , in Lincolnshire . From 1965 to 1971, he reviewed television, films, and plays as an arts critic for The Times ; from 1968 to 1978, he was also film reviewer for the Birmingham Post , and from 1968 to 1981, for The Illustrated London News . In October 1971, he left The Times to become theatre critic for The Guardian . Beginning in
2600-610: The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and also had supported the British Anti-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. In "A Play and Its Politics", a 1985 interview with Nicholas Hern, Pinter described his earlier plays retrospectively from the perspective of
2700-562: The Donald Wolfit Company, at the King's Theatre, Hammersmith , performing eight roles. From 1954 until 1959, Pinter acted under the stage name David Baron. In all, Pinter played over 20 roles under that name. 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." In October 1989 Pinter recalled: "I
2800-687: The Gate Theatre , Dublin, was held as part of the annual Lincoln Center Festival at Lincoln Center in New York City. Pinter participated both as an actor, as Nicolas in One for the Road , and as a director of a double bill pairing his last play, Celebration , with his first play, The Room . 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
2900-689: The Grand Hotel in Eastbourne , in early January 1978. After the Frasers' divorce had become final in 1977 and the Pinters' in 1980, Pinter married Fraser on 27 November 1980. 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. Vivien Merchant died of acute alcoholism in
3000-921: The Hampstead Theatre Club , in London, in 1960. It was then not produced often until the 1980s, and it has been revived more frequently since 2000, including the West End Trafalgar Studios production in 2007. The first production of The Caretaker , at the Arts Theatre Club , in London, in 1960, established Pinter's theatrical reputation. The play transferred to the Duchess Theatre in May 1960 and ran for 444 performances, receiving an Evening Standard Award for best play of 1960. Large radio and television audiences for his one-act play A Night Out , along with
3100-521: The Holocaust . 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 lampoons The Ivy , a fashionable venue in London's West End theatre district, and its patrons who "have just come from performances of either
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3200-619: The Lyric Hammersmith in 1984, he played Nicolas in One for the Road and the cab driver in Victoria Station . Among over 35 plays that Pinter directed were Next of Kin (1974), by John Hopkins ; Blithe Spirit (1976), by Noël Coward ; The Innocents (1976), by William Archibald ; Circe and Bravo (1986), by Donald Freed ; Taking Sides (1995), by Ronald Harwood ; and Twelve Angry Men (1996), by Reginald Rose . Pinter
3300-809: The Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005 and the French Légion d'honneur in 2007. Despite frail health after being diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in December 2001, Pinter continued to act on stage and screen, last performing the title role of Samuel Beckett 's one-act monologue Krapp's Last Tape , for the 50th anniversary season of the Royal Court Theatre , in October 2006. He died from liver cancer on 24 December 2008. Pinter
3400-759: The Pulitzer Prize -winning play Wit (2001); and the Director opposite John Gielgud (Gielgud's last role) and Rebecca Pidgeon in Catastrophe , by Samuel Beckett , directed by David Mamet as part of Beckett on Film (2001). Pinter began to direct more frequently during the 1970s, becoming an associate director of the National Theatre (NT) in 1973. He directed almost 50 productions of his own and others' plays for stage, film, and television, including 10 productions of works by Simon Gray :
3500-593: The Royal National Theatre , and a revival of The Caretaker directed by Patrick Marber and starring Michael Gambon , Rupert Graves , and Douglas Hodge , at the Comedy Theatre . Like Celebration , Pinter's penultimate sketch, Press Conference (2002), "invokes both torture and the fragile, circumscribed existence of dissent". In its première in the National Theatre 's two-part production of Sketches , despite undergoing chemotherapy at
3600-541: The invasion of Iraq ? A bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism , demonstrating absolute contempt for the conception of international law ." Pinter earned a reputation for being pugnacious, enigmatic, taciturn, terse, prickly, explosive and forbidding. 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. The historian Geoffrey Alderman , author of
3700-540: The 1966 film Alfie . Their son Daniel was born in 1958. Through the early 1970s, Merchant appeared in many of Pinter's works, including The Homecoming on stage (1965) and screen (1973), but the marriage was turbulent. For seven years, from 1962 to 1969, Pinter was engaged in a clandestine affair with BBC-TV presenter and journalist Joan Bakewell , which inspired his 1978 play Betrayal , and also throughout that period and beyond he had an affair with an American socialite, whom he nicknamed "Cleopatra". This relationship
3800-473: The 1980s, he was a London arts correspondent for The New York Times , and, since 1988, he has also served as drama critic for Country Life . Billington's broadcasting career had begun by 1965. Philip French , then a BBC radio producer, asked him to review two short radio plays by the then virtually unknown Tom Stoppard which were being broadcast on the BBC Third Programme . Later, he
3900-481: The 1984 film Swann in Love ( Un amour de Swann ), directed by Volker Schlöndorff , and it was also adapted by Michael Bakewell as a two-hour radio drama broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 1995, before Pinter and director Di Trevis collaborated to adapt it for the 2000 National Theatre production. Pinter's last filmed screenplay was an adaptation of the 1970 Tony Award -winning play Sleuth , by Anthony Shaffer , which
4000-641: The Blitz. In 1971, he told Mel Gussow : "one of my main obsessions in life is the game of cricket—I play and watch and read about it all the time." He was chairman of the Gaieties Cricket Club, a supporter of Yorkshire Cricket Club , and devoted a section of his official website to the sport. One wall of his study was dominated by a portrait of himself as a young man playing cricket, which was described by Sarah Lyall , writing in The New York Times : "The painted Mr. Pinter, poised to swing his bat, has
4100-462: The Commonwealth realms may be added as honorary members. Members are organised into a single class and are appointed by the monarch of the Commonwealth realms in their capacity as sovereign of the order. While membership of the order confers no title or precedence , those inducted into the order are entitled to use the post-nominal letters CH . Appointments to the order are generally made on
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4200-508: The Day (1990), and Lolita (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. His screenplays The Proust Screenplay (1972), Victory (1982), and The Dreaming Child (1997) and his unpublished screenplay The Tragedy of King Lear (2000) have not been filmed. A section of Pinter's Proust Screenplay was, however, released as
4300-543: The English language as an adjective, " Pinteresque ", although Pinter himself disliked the term and found it meaningless. Pinter's first play, The Room , written and first performed in 1957, was a student production at the University of Bristol , directed by his good friend, actor Henry Woolf , who also originated the role of Mr. Kidd (which he reprised in 2001 and 2007). After Pinter mentioned that he had an idea for
4400-729: The Harbourfront Centre, in Toronto, Canada, Pinter presented a dramatic reading of Celebration (2000) and also participated in a public interview as part of the International Festival of Authors . Companion of Honour The Order of the Companions of Honour is an order of the Commonwealth realms . It was founded on 4 June 1917 by King George V as a reward for outstanding achievements. It
4500-670: The Nobel Prize. Later Pinter continued to campaign against the Iraq War and on behalf of other political causes that he supported. Pinter signed the mission statement of Jews for Justice for Palestinians in 2005 and its full-page advertisement, "What Is Israel Doing? A Call by Jews in Britain", published in The Times on 6 July 2006, and he was a patron of the Palestine Festival of Literature . In April 2008, Pinter signed
4600-722: The Turkish suppression of the Kurdish language inspired his 1988 play Mountain Language . He was also an active member of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign , an organisation that "campaigns in the UK against the US blockade of Cuba ". In 2001, Pinter joined the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milošević (ICDSM), which appealed for a fair trial and for the freedom of Slobodan Milošević , signing
4700-653: The United Kingdom, seven for Australia, two for New Zealand, and nine for other Commonwealth realms. The quota was adjusted again in 1975 by adding two places to the New Zealand quota and reducing the nine for the other countries to seven. Whilst still able to nominate candidates to the order, the Cabinet of Australia has effectively stopped the allocation of this award to that country's citizens in preference to other Australian honours. The last Australian member, Doug Anthony , former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, died on 20 December 2020. Companions from other Commonwealth realms continue to be appointed, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa ,
4800-473: The United States "was charging towards world domination while the American public and Britain's ' mass-murdering ' prime minister sat back and watched." He was very active in the antiwar movement in the United Kingdom, speaking at rallies held by the Stop the War Coalition and frequently criticising American aggression, as when he asked rhetorically, in his acceptance speech for the Wilfred Owen Award for Poetry on 18 March 2007: "What would Wilfred Owen make of
4900-470: The advice of prime ministers of the Commonwealth realms. For Canadians, the advice to the Sovereign can come from a variety of officials. Originally, the order was limited to 50 ordinary members, but in 1943 it was enlarged to 65, with a quota of 45 members for the United Kingdom , seven for Australia , two each for New Zealand and South Africa , and nine for India , Burma , and the other British colonies . The quota numbers were altered in 1970 to 47 for
5000-452: The age of 12, Pinter began writing poetry, and in spring 1947, his poetry was first published in the Hackney Downs School Magazine . In 1950 his poetry was first published outside the school magazine, in Poetry London , some of it under the pseudonym "Harold Pinta". Pinter was an atheist. Pinter enjoyed running and broke the Hackney Downs School sprinting record. He was a cricket enthusiast, taking his bat with him when evacuated during
5100-403: The apparent "invulnerability of power." Just before this hiatus, in 1979, Pinter re-discovered his manuscript of The Hothouse , which he had written in 1958 but had set aside; he revised it and then directed its first production himself at Hampstead Theatre in London, in 1980. Like his plays of the 1980s, The Hothouse concerns authoritarianism and the abuses of power politics, but it is also
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#17327902588415200-440: The arts, science, medicine, or government lasting over a long period of time". The first recipients of the order were all decorated for "services in connection with the war " and were listed in The London Gazette . The order consists of the monarch of the Commonwealth realms, who is the Sovereign of the Order of the Companions of Honour, and a maximum of 65 members. Additionally, foreigners or Commonwealth citizens from outside
5300-413: The arts. He is the authorised biographer of the playwright Harold Pinter (1930–2008). Billington was born on 16 November 1939, in Leamington Spa , Warwickshire, England, and attended Warwick School , an independent boys' school in Warwick . He attended St Catherine's College, Oxford , from 1958 to 1961, where he studied English and was appointed theatre critic of Cherwell . He graduated with
5400-471: The badge on a neck ribbon (red with golden border threads) and women on a bow at the left shoulder. Michael Billington (critic) Michael Keith Billington OBE (born 16 November 1939) is a British author and arts critic. He writes for The Guardian , and was the paper's chief drama critic from 1971 to 2019. Billington is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and
5500-400: 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." On its surface the play may appear to have fewer overtly political resonances than some of
5600-454: The book at various venues, including the Warwick Arts Centre at the University of Warwick , and has reviewed his reviews. Following Pinter's death on 24 December 2008, The Bookseller reported that Faber and Faber planned "to rush out an updated version" of Harold Pinter , "which will take account of the international response to Pinter's death, ... at the end of January [2009]" and that it "will be released first as an e-book ." As
5700-453: The conference Artist and Citizen: 50 Years of Performing Pinter" , at Leeds University , where he attended and later reviewed the production Being Harold Pinter , by the Belarus Free Theatre . Billington is the author of several biographical and critical studies of subjects relating to British theatre and the arts, including books about Peggy Ashcroft (1907–1991), Tom Stoppard (born 1937), and Alan Ayckbourn (born 1939). He also wrote
5800-525: The couple have one daughter. Billington is a supporter of the Labour Party . In fiction, Billington's name was introduced in Death of a Hollow Man by Caroline Graham , later adapted for the Midsomer Murders television mystery series, in which DCI Tom Barnaby coaxes deluded local director, and double murderer, Harold Winstanly into accompanying him to the police station by suggesting Michael Billington and journalists from various respectable publications would be waiting to discuss his work. Billington
5900-452: The emotional texture of his life." 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. According to Billington, under Brearley's instruction, "Pinter shone at English, wrote for the school magazine and discovered a gift for acting." In 1947 and 1948, he played Romeo and Macbeth in productions directed by Brearley. At
6000-548: The first week of October 1982, at the age of 53. 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. A reclusive gifted musician and writer, Daniel changed his surname from Pinter to Brand, the maiden name of his maternal grandmother, before Pinter and Fraser became romantically involved; while according to Fraser, his father could not understand it, she says that she could: "Pinter
6100-412: The influence of Samuel Beckett , particularly on his early work; they became friends, sending each other drafts of their works in progress for comments. Pinter wrote The Hothouse in 1958, which he shelved for over 20 years (See "Overtly political plays and sketches" below). Next he wrote The Dumb Waiter (1959), which premièred in Germany and was then produced in a double bill with The Room at
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#17327902588416200-414: The international symposium "Pinter: Passion, Poetry, Politics", which he had organised, in part celebrating Pinter's being awarded the Europe Theatre Prize , in Turin , Italy, in March 2006. In April 2007, Billington presented an invited paper on "Is British Theatre As Good As It Claims?" to the Elizabethan Club , at Yale University , in New Haven, Connecticut , prior to moderating a panel discussion at
6300-463: The later ones present literal realities of power and its abuse. Pinter's "political theatre dramatizes the interplay and conflict of the opposing poles of involvement and disengagement." Mountain Language (1988) is about the Turkish suppression of the Kurdish language . The dramatic sketch The New World Order (1991) provides what Robert Cushman, writing in The Independent described as "10 nerve-wracking minutes" of two men threatening to torture
6400-427: 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. ' " After his death, Fraser told The Guardian : "He was a great man, and it was a privilege to live with him for over 33 years. He will never be forgotten." In 1948–49, when he
6500-437: The most crucial of all Pinter's lost Edens ." Beginning in late 1948, Pinter attended the Royal 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. In 1948 he was called up for National Service . He was initially refused registration as a conscientious objector , leading to his twice being prosecuted, and fined, for refusing to accept
6600-528: 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 . During 2000–2001, there were also simultaneous productions of Remembrance of Things Past , Pinter's stage adaptation of his unpublished Proust Screenplay , written in collaboration with and directed by Di Trevis , at
6700-420: The newspaper. Billington has taught in the University of Pennsylvania 's Penn-in-London program since at least as early as 1997, and he teaches courses in theatre at King's College London , where he has been a visiting professor since 2002. After attending the December 2005 Nobel Banquet , in Stockholm , on the occasion of Harold Pinter's being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature , Billington attended
6800-462: The noisy, bustling, traffic-ridden thoroughfare of the Lower Clapton Road". In 1940 and 1941, after the Blitz , Pinter was evacuated from their house in London to Cornwall and Reading . 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." Pinter discovered his social potential as
6900-424: 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, and worships their resilience and strength. But, in his early work especially, they are often seen as disruptive influences on some pure and Platonic ideal of male friendship: one of
7000-441: The novel by Penelope Mortimer , directed by Jack Clayton ; The Quiller Memorandum (1966), from the 1965 spy novel The Berlin Memorandum , by Elleston Trevor , directed by Michael Anderson ; The Last Tycoon (1976), from the unfinished novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald , directed by Elia Kazan ; The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), from the novel by John Fowles , directed by Karel Reisz ; Turtle Diary (1985), based on
7100-558: The novel by Robin Maugham ; Accident (1967), adapted from the novel by Nicholas Mosley ; and The Go-Between (1971), based on the novel by L. P. Hartley . Films based on Pinter's adaptations of his own stage plays are: The Caretaker (1963), directed by Clive Donner ; The Birthday Party (1968), directed by William Friedkin ; The Homecoming (1973), directed by Peter Hall; and Betrayal (1983), directed by David Jones . Pinter also adapted other writers' novels to screenplays, including The Pumpkin Eater (1964), based on
7200-413: The novel by Russell Hoban ; The Heat of the Day (1988), a television film, from the 1949 novel by Elizabeth Bowen ; The Comfort of Strangers (1990), from the novel by Ian McEwan , directed by Paul Schrader ; and The Trial (1993), from the novel by Franz Kafka , directed by David Jones. His commissioned screenplays of others' works for the films The Handmaid's Tale (1990), The Remains of
7300-525: The official authorised biography of 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature prizewinner Harold Pinter (1930–2008), which first appeared in 1996. In March 2007 Faber and Faber published Billington's book State of the Nation: British Theatre Since 1945 , which won the 2007 annual Theatre Book Prize from The Society for Theatre Research , presented to Billington by Sir Donald Sinden on 1 April 2008. Billington has spoken about
7400-514: 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." David Edgar , writing in The Guardian , defended Pinter against what he termed Pinter's "being berated by the belligerati" like Johann Hari , who felt that he did not "deserve" to win
7500-436: The past in the present, but they have personal and political resonances and other tonal differences from these earlier memory plays. Following a three-year period of creative drought in the early 1980s after his marriage to Antonia Fraser and the death of Vivien Merchant, Pinter's plays tended to become shorter and more overtly political, serving as critiques of oppression , torture , and other abuses of human rights, linked by
7600-457: The play garnered four Tony Awards , among other awards. During this period, Pinter also wrote the radio play A Slight Ache , first broadcast on the BBC Third Programme in 1959 and then adapted to the stage and performed at the Arts Theatre Club in 1961. A Night Out (1960) was broadcast to a large audience on ABC Weekend TV 's television show Armchair Theatre , after being transmitted on BBC Radio 3, also in 1960. His play Night School
7700-566: The play indicates Pinter's pessimism about the possibility of changing the status quo. Yet, as the Waiter's often comically unbelievable reminiscences about his grandfather demonstrate in Celebration , Pinter's final stage plays also extend some expressionistic 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
7800-734: 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 in Party Time ), who describe themselves as "peaceful strategy consultants [because] we don't carry guns." At the next table, Russell, a banker, describes himself as a "totally disordered personality ... a psychopath", while Lambert "vows to be reincarnated as '[a] more civilised, [a] gentler person, [a] nicer person'." These characters' deceptively smooth exteriors mask their extreme viciousness. Celebration evokes familiar Pinteresque political contexts: "The ritzy loudmouths in 'Celebration' ... and
7900-664: The politics of power and the dynamics of oppression. In his last 25 years, Pinter increasingly focused his essays, interviews and public appearances directly on political issues. He was an officer in International PEN , travelling with American playwright Arthur Miller to Turkey in 1985 on a mission co-sponsored with a Helsinki 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
8000-482: The popularity of his revue sketches, propelled him to further critical attention. 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 the Aldwych Theatre ) and was well received. By the time Peter Hall's London production of The Homecoming (1964) reached Broadway in 1967, Pinter had become a celebrity playwright, and
8100-433: The pseudonym Pinta and at other times used variations such as da Pinto . Later research by Lady Antonia Fraser , Pinter's second wife, revealed the legend to be apocryphal; three of Pinter's grandparents came from Poland and the fourth from Odesa , so the family was Ashkenazic . Pinter's family home in London is described by his official biographer Michael Billington as "a solid, red-brick, three-storey villa just off
8200-450: The quieter working-class mumblers of 'The Room' ... have everything in common beneath the surface". "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 in Celebration with lasting change in larger political structures", according to Grimes, for whom
8300-664: The relationship from Merchant for two and a half months, on 21 March 1975, Pinter finally told her "I've met somebody". 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 of No Man's Land . 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 in Holland Park , where Pinter began writing Betrayal . He reworked it later, while on holiday at
8400-458: The screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1971), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Trial (1993) and Sleuth (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television and film productions of his own and others' works. Pinter was born and raised in Hackney , east London, and educated at Hackney Downs School . He
8500-626: The sole focus of his father's love and now manifestly wasn't." Still unreconciled at the time of his father's death, Daniel Brand did not attend Pinter's funeral. 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. In her own contemporaneous diary entry dated 15 January 1993, Fraser described herself more as Pinter's literary midwife. Indeed, she told Billington that "other people [such as Peggy Ashcroft , among others] had
8600-614: The stage and/or film premières of Butley (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), and The Old Masters (2004). Several of those productions starred Alan 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
8700-681: 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" Pinter's acting career spanned over 50 years and, although he often played villains , included a wide range of roles on stage and in radio, film, and television. 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
8800-416: The time, Pinter played the ruthless Minister willing to murder little children for the benefit of "The State". Pinter composed 27 screenplays and film scripts for cinema and television, many of which were filmed, or adapted as stage plays. His fame as a screenwriter began with his three screenplays written for films directed by Joseph Losey , leading to their close friendship: The Servant (1963), based on
8900-718: Was 18, Pinter opposed the politics of the Cold War , leading to his decision to become a conscientious objector and to refuse to comply with National Service in the British military. However, he told interviewers that, if he had been old enough at the time, he would have fought against the Nazis in World War II . He seemed to express ambivalence, both indifference and hostility, towards political structures and politicians in his Fall 1966 Paris Review interview conducted by Lawrence M. Bensky . Yet, he had been an early member of
9000-568: Was a presenter (and participant) in Critics Forum ( Radio 3 ), which ended in 1990, and the Kaleidoscope arts programme ( Radio 4 ). He has contributed to other British arts and drama radio and television programmes. Billington blogs for guardian.co.uk and previously also blogged for WhatsOnStage.com . Billington left his role as The Guardian ' s chief theatre critic at the end of 2019, although he continues to write for
9100-549: Was a sprinter and a keen cricket player, acting in school plays and writing poetry . He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art but did not complete the course. He was fined for refusing national service as a conscientious objector . Subsequently, he continued training at the Central School of Speech and Drama and worked in repertory theatre in Ireland and England. In 1956 he married actress Vivien Merchant and had
9200-667: Was an entry in that year's National Student Drama Festival (NSDF 1960), which Hobson had co-founded in 1956, Billington's directorial debut was not well received at the Festival, yet Billington credits Hobson with having "changed my life". After the Festival, he decided to forgo pursuing a career as a theatre practitioner to "follow" Hobson's "footsteps" and become a critic of theatre too; five years later, they would become colleagues at The Times . After leaving Oxford in 1961, Billington began working as an arts critic in Liverpool for
9300-547: Was another secret he kept from both his wife and Bakewell. Initially, Betrayal was thought to be a response to his later affair with historian Antonia Fraser , the wife of Hugh Fraser , and Pinter's "marital crack-up". Pinter and Merchant had both met Antonia Fraser in 1969, when all three worked together on a National Gallery programme about Mary, Queen of Scots ; several years later, on 8–9 January 1975, Pinter and Fraser became romantically involved. That meeting initiated their five-year extramarital love affair. After hiding
9400-474: Was born on 10 October 1930, in Hackney , east London, the only child of British Jewish parents of Eastern European descent: his father, Hyman "Jack" Pinter (1902–1997) was a ladies' tailor; his mother, Frances (née Moskowitz; 1904–1992), a housewife. Pinter believed an aunt's erroneous view that the family was Sephardic and had fled the Spanish Inquisition ; thus, for his early poems, Pinter used
9500-403: Was commissioned by Jude Law , one of the film's producers. It is the basis for the 2007 film Sleuth , directed by Kenneth Branagh . Pinter's screenplays for The French Lieutenant's Woman and Betrayal were nominated for Academy Awards in 1981 and 1983, respectively. From 16 to 31 July 2001, a Harold Pinter Festival celebrating his work, curated by Michael Colgan , artistic director of
9600-494: Was first televised in 1960 on Associated Rediffusion . The Collection premièred at the Aldwych Theatre in 1962, and The 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 with The Lover , which had previously been televised by Associated Rediffusion in 1963; and Tea Party ,
9700-534: Was founded on the same date as the Order of the British Empire . The order was originally intended to be conferred upon a limited number of persons for whom this special distinction seemed to be the most appropriate form of recognition, constituting an honour dissociated from either the acceptance of title or the classification of merit. It is now described as being "awarded for having a major contribution to
9800-442: 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." 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. From 1956 until 1980, Pinter was married to Vivien Merchant , an actress whom he met on tour, perhaps best known for her performance in
9900-476: Was initially both a commercial and critical disaster, despite an enthusiastic review in The Sunday Times by its influential drama critic Harold Hobson , which appeared only after the production had closed and could not be reprieved. 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
10000-422: Was the author of 29 plays and 15 dramatic sketches and the co-author of two works for stage and radio. He was considered to have been one of the most influential modern British dramatists, Along with the 1967 Tony Award for Best Play for The Homecoming and several other American awards and award nominations, he and his plays received many awards in the UK and elsewhere throughout the world. His style has entered
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