“a staggeringly confident debut which attracted the attention of a young producer, Michael Codron, who decided to present Pinter”
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Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter was an English playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A recipient of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature, 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 the screen. His screenplay…
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entertainment · English playwright (1930–2008) · playwright · actor · film director · screenwriter · writer · theatre director · poet · novelist · director · also Harold Pinter, Pinter
Born 10 October 1930 · Died 24 December 2008 · Q41042
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Harold Pinter BBC Radio4 Front Row 26 Dec 2008 b00gy71c
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2026· 3 entries
Public attention spiked: 4,157 Wikipedia readers in one day, 7.4× the usual 563, with 0 article edits.
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The New York Times: Harold Pinter
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2025· 1 entry
The Telegraph: A guide to the Harold Pinter Theatre
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2023· 1 entry
Los Angeles Times: Necessary verbal ruthlessness is in short supply in this rare Harold Pinter revival
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2013· 1 entry
Was posthumously awarded the Sretenje Order of Serbia
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2009· 2 entries
Observer: Harold Pinter Enters the Silence Of the Long Pause
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English PEN established the PEN 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 wor
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2008· 4 entries
NPR: Harold Pinter, Playwright And Nobel Laureate, Dies
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Died 2008-12-24.
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“Ian Rickson, diretor artístico do teatro londrino Royal Court, no qual Pinter deve atuar para comemorar o 50º aniversário da casa de espetáculos”
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Included the 40th-anniversary production of the American première of The Homecoming on Broadway, directed by Daniel J
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2006· 2 entries
Awarded Europe Theatre Prize (2006).
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Conducted by critic Michael Billington as part of the cultural programme of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, Pinter confirmed that he would continue to write poetry but not plays
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2005· 8 entries
Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature — who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms.
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National Review: Harold Pinter’s Special Triteness.
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KCRW: Harold Pinter: A Nobel Career on Stage
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Awarded Franz Kafka Prize (2005).
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Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature (2005).
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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
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“But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.”
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And its full-page advertisement, "What Is Israel Doing
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2004· 1 entry
Received the Wilfred Owen Award for Poetry for his "lifelong contribution to literature, 'and specifically for his collection of poetry entitled War, published in 2003'"
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2002· 1 entry
Underwent an operation and chemotherapy
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2001· 1 entry
Pinter joined the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milošević (ICDSM), which appealed for a fair trial and for the freedom of Slobodan Milošević, signing a related "Artists' Appeal for Milošević" in 2004
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1996· 1 entry
Received a Laurence Olivier Special Award for lifetime achievement in the theatre
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1995· 3 entries
Awarded America Award in Literature (1995).
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Accepted the David Cohen Prize, in recognition of a lifetime of literary achievement
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Before Pinter and director Di Trevis collaborated to adapt it for the 2000 National Theatre production
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1992· 1 entry
Directing that production, first broadcast in the UK on Channel 4 on 17 November 1992
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1985· 3 entries
On a mission co-sponsored with a Helsinki Watch committee to investigate and protest against the torture of imprisoned writers
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Pinter stated that whereas his earlier plays presented metaphors for power and powerlessness, the later ones present literal realities of power and its abuse
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Pinter recalled that his early act of conscientious objection resulted from being "terribly disturbed as a young man by the Cold War
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1984· 1 entry
Played Nicolas in One for the Road and the cab driver in Victoria Station
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1979· 1 entry
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
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1977· 1 entry
And the Pinters' in 1980, Pinter married Fraser on 27 November 1980
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1975· 2 entries
And married author Lady Antonia Fraser in 1980
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(the year in which he and Fraser began living together), followed by brief memoirs by some of Pinter's associates and friends, including Patrick Marber, Nina Raine, Tom Stoppard, Peter Nichols, Susanna Gross, Richard Eyr
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1973· 1 entry
Awarded Austrian State Prize for European Literature (1973).
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1971· 1 entry
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
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1969· 1 entry
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
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1967· 1 entry
Pinter had become a celebrity playwright, and the play garnered four Tony Awards, among other awards
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1966· 1 entry
And became a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 2002, having declined a knighthood in 1996
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1965· 1 entry
Awarded BAFTA Award for Best British Screenplay for The Pumpkin Eater (1965).
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1964· 1 entry
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
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1962· 1 entry
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
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1960· 2 entries
“As far as I am concerned The 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.”
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Established Pinter's theatrical reputation
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1959· 1 entry
And then adapted to the stage and performed at the Arts Theatre Club in 1961
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1958· 3 entries
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
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“Overtly political plays and sketches”
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Which he shelved for over 20 years (See "Overtly political plays and sketches" below)
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1957· 2 entries
Was a student production at the University of Bristol, directed by his good friend, actor Henry Woolf, who also originated the role of Mr
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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 in The Sunday Times by its influential dr
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1956· 1 entry
Married actress Vivien Merchant and had a son, Daniel, born in 1958
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1952· 1 entry
Began acting in regional English repertory productions; from 1953 to 1954, he worked for the Donald Wolfit Company, at the King's Theatre, Hammersmith, performing eight roles
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1950· 1 entry
His poetry was first published outside the school magazine, in Poetry London, some of it under the pseudonym "Harold Pinta"
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1949· 1 entry
Studied at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (1949).
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1948· 1 entry
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 critic
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1947· 1 entry
And 1948, he played Romeo and Macbeth in productions directed by Brearley
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1940· 1 entry
And 1941, after the Blitz, Pinter was evacuated from their house in London to Cornwall and Reading
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1930· 1 entry
Born 1930-10-10.
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1910· 1 entry
And to turn it into a memorial to Pinter "to honour this Hackney boy turned literary great
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