Pinter, Harold

(1930- )

   Born in Hackney - a working-class neighborhood in London's East End - the son of a Jewish tailor, he was educated at Hackney Downs Grammar School and spent two years at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. In 1950 he started publishing poems in Poetry under the name Harold Pinta and became a full-time actor, then started writing for the stage. The Birthday Party was first performed by Bristol University's drama department in 1957 and produced in 1958 in London's West End. Since then he has gone on to write ten more plays, adapted many of them for radio and television and has written the screenplays to five films. He was made a Commander of the British Empire in 1966 and Companion of Honor in 2002. He has a clutch of 23 major literary awards, including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005. His wife is the writer Lady Antonia Fraser and they in London. Some of his poems: "American Football," "Democracy," "God Bless America," "Message," "Restaurant," "The Bombs," "The Ventriloquists," "Weather Forecast."

   Sources: Biography of Harold Pinter (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hpinter.htm). British Council Arts (http://www.contemporarywriters.com). Poemhunter (www.poemhunter.com). Red Pepper, Harold Pinter War Poetry (http://www.redpepper.org.uk/arts/x-feb04-pinter.htm). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Who's Who. London: A & C Black, 2005.