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Harold Pinter, CH, CBE (born 10 October 1930) is a British playwright, screenwriter, poet, actor, director, author, and political activist, best known for his plays The Birthday Party (1957), The Caretaker (1959), The Homecoming (1964), and Betrayal (1978), and for his screenplay adaptations of novels by others, such as The Servant (1963) and The French Lieutenant's Woman (1980).

The recipient of scores of awards and honorary degrees, Pinter received the Nobel Prize in Literature from the Swedish Academy in December 2005. In its citation, the Academy states that "Harold Pinter is generally regarded as the foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the 20th century."See the Swedish Academy's Announcement (incl. links to video of official Nobel "Announcement," "Interview," and "Press Release"). See also the "Special Report" posted in The Guardian Online, including "'The foremost representative of British drama': Excerpts From the Swedish Academy's Citation Awarding the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature to British Playwright Harold Pinter" (13 October 2006). "Bio-bibliography" for Harold Pinter posted online on the Swedish Academy and the Nobel Foundation websites incorporates the full version of Pinter's Nobel citation.

Biography

Pinter was born in Hackney in London to working class, native English-Jewish parents of Eastern-European ancestry. Correcting general knowledge about Pinter's family background, Michael Billington, Pinter's authorized biographer, documents that "three of Pinter's grandparents hail from Poland and one from Odessa, making them Ashkenazic rather than Sephardic Jews."Billington, Life and Work 1-5: "A constant feature of the Pinter legend, repeated in all the books, is that the family were Sephardic Jews of Spanish or Portuguese origin and that the original family name was Pinto, da Pinto or da Pinta, but there seems no evidence for this whatsoever. Indeed Antonia Fraser, with a historian's passion for genealogy, sat down with Pinter's parents one afternoon after lunch in Holland Park and discovered the real story: three of Pinter's grandparents [his paternal grandfather, Nathan Pinter, and his grandmothers] hail from Poland and one [his maternal grandfather, Harry Moskowitz (in business, aka Richard Mann)] from Odessa, making them Ashkenazic rather than Sephardic Jews" (3). ("Pinter's paternal grandfather Nathan was born in Poland in 1870 and came to England alone in 1900 in the wave of Russian pograms. He later went back for his wife and family. . . . [Their] third child Jack, Harold Pinter's father, was born in the East End in 1902. . ." [2-3]. Pinter's maternal grandfather [Harry Moskowitz (Richard Mann)] emigrated to London from Odessa "via Paris" in 1900 and remarried "Polish-born Rose Franklin" following his first wife's death; Pinter's mother, Frances, their "eldest" child, was born in 1904 [3].) In the Aug. 1950 issue of Poetry London, Pinter's first poems to appear in such a poetry magazine ("New Year in the Midlands" and "Chandeliers and Shadows") were "published under the name of Harold Pinta largely because one of his aunts was convinced—against all the evidence—that the family came from distinguished Portuguese ancestors, the da Pintas" (29). Pinter also discussed his heritage with Ramona Koval, during a public interview at the Edinburgh Book Festival in August 2002, later transcribed and posted online on ABC public radio (Books and Writing). At that time, Pinter repeated some of these details, referring to speculations about his family's Hungarian and Portuguese derivations: "My mother and father were born in England, by the way, in about 1902 and 1904; so they were here. They were English. . . . they were English-Jewish. My grandparents came from a rather mysterious area which some call Odessa and others call Hungary. I have no idea. My wife is convinced that after a lot of research, and she’s pretty good at research, that my family did actually come from Odessa. And she has pretty good evidence of that. However, I found that in the 1946 Olympics there was a Hungarian sprinter called Pinter. And I also know that—I’ve been told, anyway—one of my aunts believed that we were originally da Pinta in Portugal and that we were thrown out by the Spanish Inquisition. I wasn’t quite sure whether they had a Spanish Inquisition in Portugal, but according to my aunt, they certainly did. [laughter]. [Cf. Portuguese Inquisition.] And where they went from the Spanish Inquisition is rather misty, shall we say, so I’m not quite sure . . . Anyway, in short, my background is slightly misty. But my family, nevertheless, was a very stable and conventional Jewish family." (Pintér [or Pinter] is a common Hungarian surname; Pinto, Pinta, and da Pinta are common Portuguese surnames and place names. Pinto and da Pinto also occur in Italian [by way of Portuguese]. Cf. List of most common surnames.) Pinter was educated at Hackney Downs Grammar School. A "profound influence" on him was his evacuation to Cornwall and Reading from London during 1940 and 1941 before and during The Blitz and facing "the life-and-death intensity of daily experience."Billington, Life and Work 5-10; cf. Harold Pinter, "Evacuees," an interview conducted in 1968 by B.S. Johnson, first published in The Pinter Review: Annual Essays 1994: 8-13. He frequently wrote and published poetry as a teenager (and has continued to do so throughout his career). He played Romeo and Macbeth in 1947 and 1948, while still a student at Hackney Downs Grammar School in productions directed by his English tutor, mentor, and friend Joseph Brearley (13-14).

Beginning in autumn 1948, for two semesters, he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). Later that year, he was "called up for National Service," registered as a conscientious objector, was brought to trial twice, and ultimately fined by the magistrate for refusing to serve. He "loath[ed]" RADA, mostly cut classes, and dropped out in 1949. He had a minor role in Dick Whittington and His Cat at the Chesterfield Hippodrome in 1949-50. From January to July 1951, he attended "two terms" at the Central School of Speech and Drama. From 1951-52, he toured Ireland with the Anew McMaster repertory company, playing over a dozen roles; in 1952 he began regional repertory acting jobs in England; and from 1953-54, he worked for the Donald Wolfit Company, King's Theatre, Hammersmith, performing nearly ten roles. From 1954 until 1959, Harold Pinter acted under the stage name David Baron.Pinter's paternal "grandmother's maiden name was Baron . . . he adopted it as his stage-name . . . [and] used it [Baron] for the autobiographical character of Mark in the first draft of [his novel] The Dwarfs" (Billington, Life and Work 3). According to Billington, Pinter worked as an actor for "about nine years," primarily in regional repertory companies, performing nearly twenty-five roles.In an Oct. 1989 interview with Mel Gussow, Pinter says, "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" (83). During that period, he also performed occasional roles in his own and others' works (for radio, TV, and film), as he has done increasingly more recently.Billington, Life and Work 20-25; 31, 36, 38; Batty, "Chronology" in About Pinter; Batty, comp., "Acting" & "Directing" at HaroldPinter.org.

From 1956 until 1980, Pinter was married to Vivien Merchant, a rep actress whom he met on tour, probably best known for her performance in the original film Alfie (1966). Their son, Daniel, was born in 1958. Through the early 70s, Merchant appeared in many of Pinter's works, most notably The Homecoming on stage (1965) and screen (1973). The marriage was rather "turbulent" and began disintegrating in the mid-1960s. For seven years, from 1962-69, Pinter was engaged in a clandestine affair with Joan Bakewell, which informed his play Betrayal (1978). According to his own program notes for that play, between 1975 and 1980, he lived with historian Lady Antonia Fraser, wife of Sir Hugh Fraser. In 1975, Merchant filed for divorce."People," online posting, Time Archive: 1923 to the Present 11 Aug. 1975 (7 July 2006). The Frasers' divorce became final in 1977 and the Pinters' in 1980. In 1980, Pinter married Antonia Fraser. Unable to overcome her bitterness and grief at the loss of her husband, Vivien Merchant died of acute alcoholism in 1983. According to Billington, Pinter "did everything possible to support" her until her death and regrets that he became estranged from their son, Daniel, after their separation and Pinter's remarriage.A reclusive gifted writer and musician, Daniel does not use the surname Pinter, having adopted as his surname his maternal grandmother's maiden name, Brand, after his parents separated (Life and Work 276, 255). Pinter has stated publicly in several recent interviews that he remains "very happy" in his second marriage and enjoys family life, which includes his six adult step-children and over twice as many grandchildren, and considers himself "a very lucky man in every respect."See, e.g., Billington, Life and Work and "'They said...'", Moss, and Wark.

Career (1957- )

Pinter is the author of twenty-nine plays, fifteen dramatic sketches, over twenty-one screenplays and filmscripts for cinema and television, a novel, and other prose fiction and essays, and co-author of two works for stage and radio. Along with the 1967 Tony Award for Best Play for The Homecoming and several other American awards and award nominations, he and his plays have received many awards in the UK and elsewhere throughout the world. His screenplays for The French Lieutenant's Woman and Betrayal were nominated for Academy Awards in the category of "Writing: Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium" in 1981 and 1983, respectively. (See Honors.)

Pinter's first play, The Room, written in 1957, was a student production at the Bristol University directed by (later acclaimed) actor Henry Woolf, who also originated the role of Mr. Kidd in that play (which he reprised in 2001). After his longtime friend Pinter had mentioned that he had an "idea" for a play, Woolf asked him to write it so that he could direct it as part of fulfilling requirements for his postgraduate work. Pinter wrote it in three days.Woolf, as qtd. in Merritt, "Talking about Pinter" 147. To mark and celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of that first production of The Room, Henry Woolf will again be reprising his role of Mr. Kidd, as well as his role of the Man in Pinter's play Monologue, as part of an international symposium at the University of Leeds being planned for April 2007.See the program announcement of Artist and Citizen: Fifty Years of Performing Pinter posted on the website of the Harold Pinter Society.

The Birthday Party (1957), Pinter's second play and among his best-known, was initially a disaster, despite a rave review in the Sunday Times by leading theater critic (the late) Sir Harold Hobson, which appeared only after the play closed and thus could not save that production.See Harold Hobson, "The Screw Turns Again," originally published in the London Sunday Times 25 May 1958: 11; cf. Merritt, "Sir Harold Hobson: The Promptings of Personal Experience" 221-25. The entire review is accessible in the sec. on The Birthday Party (premiere) at HaroldPinter.org, including the following often-quoted passage: One of the actors in Harold Pinter[']s The Birthday Party at the Lyric, Hammersmith, announces in the programme that he read History at Oxford, and took his degree with Fourth Class Honours. Now I am well aware that Mr Pinter[']s play received extremely bad notices last Tuesday morning. At the moment I write these 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 that The Birthday Party is not a Fourth, not even a Second, but a First; 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 a note of their names. Hobson is generally credited by Pinter himself and other critics as bolstering him and perhaps even rescuing his careerBillington, Life and Work 85; e.g., in their Sept. 1993 interview, Pinter told Mel Gussow: "I felt pretty discouraged before Hobson. He had a tremendous influence on my life" (141). After the success of The Caretaker in 1960, which established Pinter's theatrical reputation, The Birthday Party was revived both on television (with Pinter himself in the role of Goldberg) and on stage and well received. By the time Peter Hall's production of The Homecoming (1964) reached New York (1967), Harold Pinter had become a celebrity playwright, and the play garnered four Tony awards, among other awards.

In a review published in 1958, borrowing from the subtitle of A Lunatic View, a play by David Campton, theater critic Irving Wardle also called Pinter's early plays "comedy of menace," a label that people have applied repeatedly to his work, at times pigeonholing and attempting to tame it. (Cf. Comedy of manners.)Merritt, Pinter in Play 225-26. 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. (Cf. Theatre of the Absurd.) Pinter acknowledges the influence of Samuel Beckett, particularly on his early work; they became friends, sending each other drafts of their works in progress for comments.Harold Pinter on Newsnight Review.

From the late sixties through the early eighties, Pinter wrote Landscape, Silence, "Night," Old Times, No Man's Land, Betrayal, and The Proust Screenplay, Family Voices, and A Kind of Alaska , all of which dramatize aspects of memory and which critics sometimes categorize as Pinter's "memory plays."

Pinter began to direct more frequently during the 1970s, becoming an associate director of the National Theatre in 1973, and he has directed almost fifty productions of his own and others' plays for stage, film, and television.

Beginning in the mid-1980s, his plays tended to become shorter and overtly political, serving as critiques of oppression, torture, and other abuses of human rights. In a 1985 interview called "A Play and Its Politics," with Nicholas Hern, published in the Grove Press edition of One for the Road, Pinter states that whereas his earlier plays presented "metaphors" about power and powerlessness, the later ones present "realities" of power and its abuse. From 1993 to 1999, reflecting both personal and political concerns, Pinter wrote Moonlight (1993) and Ashes to Ashes (1996), full-length plays with domestic settings relating to death and dying and (in the latter case) to such "atrocities" as the Holocaust; in this period, after the deaths of first his mother and then his father, again merging the personal and the political, Pinter wrote the poems "Death" (1997) (which he read in his 2005 Nobel Lecture) and "The Disappeared" (1998).

In July and August of 2001, a Harold Pinter Festival celebrating his work was held at Lincoln Center in New York City, which he participated in as both a director (of a double bill pairing his newest play Celebration with his first play The Room) and an actor (as Nicolas in One for the Road).

In October 2001, as part of a weeklong "Harold Pinter Homage" at the World Leaders Festival, in Toronto, he presented a dramatic reading of Celebration (2000), following the reception and during the dinner honoring him, and also participated in a public interview.Press release International Festival of Authors, Toronto. That winter his collaboration with director Di Trevis resulted in their stage adaptation of his as-yet unfilmed 1972 work The Proust Screenplay (Remembrance of Things Past) being produced at the National Theatre, in London.Archived production details National Theatre, London, Feb. 2001. There was also a revival of The Caretaker in the West End.

Late in 2001, Pinter was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus, for which, in 2002, he underwent a successful operation and chemotherapy. During the course of his treatment, he directed a production of his play No Man's Land, wrote and performed in his new sketch "Press Conference" for a two-part otherwise-retrospective program of his dramatic sketches at the National Theatre, and was seen on television in America in the role of Vivian Bearing's father in the HBO film version of Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Wit. Since then, having become increasingly politically "engaged" as "citizen Pinter," Pinter has continued to write and present politically-charged poetry, dramatic works, essays and speeches.

On 28 February 2005, in an interview with Mark Lawson on the BBC Radio 4 program Front Row, Pinter announced that he would retire from writing plays to dedicate himself to his political activism and writing poetry: "I think I've written 29 plays. I think it's enough for me. I think I've found other forms now. 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."See Lawson, "Pinter to 'give up writing plays.'" Pinter has reiterated his statement subsequently, but occasionally leaves open the possibility that if a compelling dramatic "image" were to come to mind (which he states as "not likely"), perhaps he would still be obliged to pursue it. Indeed, after making this point, at the end of his Newsnight Review interview with Kirsty Wark, broadcast on June 23, 2006, he and Rupert Graves performed a dramatic reading of a "new work" by Pinter, a dramatic sketch called "Apart from That," inspired by Pinter's strong adversion to mobile telephones (He made clear that he doesn't own one).See Wark, "Harold Pinter on Newsnight Review."

Pinter participated in "Meet the Author" with Ramona Koval, at the Edinburgh Book Festival, first public appearance in Britain since he won the Nobel Prize, in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the evening of 25 August 2006. Prior to the interview, Pinter read a scene from his play The Birthday Party.On 25 September 2006, Ramona Koval began featuring her interview with Pinter on the website of the program The Book Show, on Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), including downloadable audio files (MP3) and a printable transcript. See Ramona Koval, "Harold Pinter, Nobel Prize-Winning Playwright and Poet, at Edinburgh International Book Festival (transcript available)," Edinburgh, Scotland, 25 Aug. 2006, The Book Show, Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), 25 Sept. 2006, accessed 26 Sept. 2006. According to one press account, "Pinter, whose last published play came out in 2000, said the reason he had given up writing was that he had 'written himself out', adding: 'I recently had a holiday in Dorset and took a couple of my usual yellow writing pads. I didn't write a damn word. Fondly, I turned them over and put them in a drawer.'"Qtd. by David Robinson, "I'm Written Out, Says Controversial Pinter," The Scotsman 26 Aug. 2006: 6, accessed 31 Aug. 2006. From Robinson's perspective, "[D]espite giving up writing [Pinter] will carry on his acting career" (Robinson, "I'm Written Out"). From another perspective, as two other journalists observe: "So keenly is Harold Pinter relishing his return to the stage this autumn that he has put his literary career on the back burner."Richard Eden and Tim Walker, "Mandrake: A Pinteresque Silence," Sunday Telegraph 27 Aug. 2006, accessed 31 Aug. 2006.

After returning to London from Edinburgh, in September, Pinter plans to begin rehearsing for his performance of the role of Krapp in Krapp's Last Tape, the one-man play by Samuel Beckett. This production, from 11 October, the day after Pinter's 76th birthday, to 21 October, is part of the fiftieth-anniversary celebration season of the Royal Court Theatre, in London.See Edinburgh Book Festival and the production announcement for Krapp's Last Tape, as well as "Upcoming events for the year 2006" on the home page of HaroldPinter.org. Pinter said: "It's a great challenge and I'm going to have a crack at it" (qtd. by Robinson, "I'm Written Out"). This Royal Court production was sold out by the first day of general ticket sales (4 September 2006).

On 18 August, 2006, Sheffield Theatres announced Pinter: A Celebration, to take place for a month from 11 October through 11 November, 2006. The program features selected productions of Pinter's plays (in order of presentation): The Caretaker, Voices, No Man's Land, Family Voices, Tea Party, The Room, One for the Road and The Dumb Waiter; films (most his screenplays; some in which Pinter appears as an actor): The Go-Between, Accident, The Birthday Party, The French Lieutenant's Woman, Reunion, Mojo, The Servant, The Pumpkin Eater; and other related program events: "Pause for Thought" (Penelope Wilton and Douglas Hodge in conversation with Michael Billington), "Ashes to Ashes –– A Cricketing Celebration," a "Pinter Quiz Night," "The New World Order," the BBC2 documentary film Arena: Harold Pinter (introd. Anthony Wall, producer of Arena), and "The New World Order –– A Pause for Peace" (a consideration of "Pinter's pacifist writing" [both poems and prose] supported by the Sheffield Quakers), and a screening of "Pinter's passionate and antagonistic 45-mintute Nobel Prize Lecture."See "Latest News: August 2006: Sheffield Theatres Presents Pinter: A Celebration," sheffieldtheatres.co.uk 18 August, 2006, accessed 28 September, 2006.

A Broadway revival of The Homecoming, starring Ian McShane and directed by Daniel Sullivan, is "scheduled to begin rehearsals in October 2007."Andrew Gans, "Ian McShane to Have Broadway Homecoming," Playbill 14 November, 2006, accessed 14 November, 2006.

Political activism

Pinter was an early member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the United Kingdom and supported the British Anti-Apartheid Movement (1959-94), participating in British artists' refusal to permit professional productions of their work in South Africa in 1963 and in subsequent related campaigns).See E. S. Reddy, "Free Mandela: An Account of the Campaign to Free Nelson Mandela and All Other Political Prisoners in South Africa," July 1988, online posting, African National Congress (ANC): Documents: History of Campaigns. He has been active in International PEN, serving as a vice-president, along with American playwright Arthur Miller. In 1985, Pinter and Miller traveled to Turkey, on a mission co-sponsored by International PEN and a Helsinki Watch committee to investigate and protest the torture of imprisoned writers. There he met victims of political oppression and their families. At an American embassy dinner in Ankara, held in Miller's honor, at which Pinter was also an invited guest, speaking on behalf of those imprisoned Turkish writers, Pinter confronted the ambassador with (in Pinter's words) "[t]he reality . . . of electric current on your genitals": Pinter's outspokenness apparently angered their host and led to indications of his desired departure. Guest of honor Miller left the embassy with him. Recounting this episode for a tribute to Miller on his 80th birthday, Pinter concludes: "Being thrown out of the US embassy in Ankara with Arthur Miller — a voluntary exile — was one of the proudest moments in my life."Qtd. from "Arthur Miller's Socks," posted in "Campaigning Against Torture" at HaroldPinter.org and rpt. in Various Voices. Pinter's experiences in Turkey and his knowledge of the Turkish suppression of the Kurdish language "inspired" his 1988 play Mountain Language.Billington, Life and Work 309-10; Gussow, Conversations with Pinter 67-68.

He is an active delegate of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign in the United Kingdom, an organization that defends Cuba, supports the government of Fidel Castro, and campaigns against the U.S. embargo on the country.See the Cuba Solidarity Campaign website Hands Off Cuba! In 2001 Pinter joined the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milošević (ICDSM), which appealed for a fair trial for and the freedom of Slobodan Milošević; he signed a related "Artists' Appeal for Milošević" in 2004. (The organization continues its presence on the internet even after Milošević's death in 2006.)

He strongly opposed the 1991 Gulf War, the 1999 NATO bombing campaign in Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War, the 2001 United States war in Afghanistan, and the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. He has been very active in the current anti-war movement in the United Kingdom, speaking at rallies held by the Stop the War Coalition. He has called the President of the United States, George W. Bush, a "mass murderer" and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, both "mass-murdering" and a "deluded idiot"; he alleges that they, along with past U.S. officials, are "war criminals." He has compared the Bush administration ("a bunch of criminal lunatics") with Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, saying that, under Bush, the United States ("a monster out of control") strives to attain "world domination" through "Full spectrum dominance", while, like a "bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain," led by Blair, participates in "an act of premeditated mass murder" instigated on behalf of "the American people", who, Pinter acknowledges, increasingly protest "their government's actions."Pinter, in a public reading from War, as qtd. by Chrisafis and Tilden, "Pinter blasts 'Nazi America' and 'deluded idiot' Blair"; cf. Pinter's remarks to the mass peace protest demonstration held on 15 February 2003 in London, published as "Speech at Hyde Park": "The United States is a monster out of control. Unless we challenge it with absolute determination American barbarism will destroy the world. The country is run by a bunch of criminal lunatics, with Blair as their hired Christian thug. The planned attack on Iraq is an act of premeditated mass murder"; and Pinter's 2005 Nobel Lecture, "Art, Truth & Politics": "Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government's actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent political force - yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish." Cf. Not in Our Name and Not in my name, also a slogan used by the UK Stop the War Coalition, in whose anti-war protests and rallies Pinter has participated.

He continues to sign petitions on behalf of artistic and political causes that he supports, and became a signatory of the mission statement of Jews For Justice For Palestinians in 2005 and of its full-page advertisement, "What Is Israel Doing? A Call by Jews in Britain" featured in the London Times on 6 July 2006.See "About Jews For Justice For Palestinians," featuring its mission statement and links to a pdf file of the ad. He also co-signed an open letter about recent events in the Middle East dated 19 July 2006, distributed to major news publications on 21 July 2006, and posted on the website of Noam Chomsky on 27 July 2006.See "What's New,"Chomsky.info and "Letter from Pinter, Saramago, Chomsky and Berger"; both accessed 25 July 2006. The letter was signed first by John Berger, Noam Chomsky, Harold Pinter, and José Saramago and "later endorsed" by Tariq Ali, et al. Cf. "Palestinian Nation under Threat,"The Independent 21 July 2006, accessed 26 Aug. 2006. See also Chomsky, "Comments on Dershowitz," ZNet 6 Sept. 2006, accessed 7 Sept. 2006, preceding the quoted text of a reply to the letter by Alan Dershowitz.

He also contributes letters to the editor, essays, speeches, and poetry strongly expressing his artistic and political viewpoints, which are frequently published initially in British periodicals, both via print and online publishing and, increasingly, distributed and re-distributed extensively over the Internet and throughout the blogosphere. These have been distributed more widely since his winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005; subsequent related news accounts often cite his status as a Nobel Laureate.

For over the past two decades, in his speeches, interviews, and literary readings, Pinter has focused increasingly on political issues. Since the mid-eighties, he has described his earlier plays retrospectively from the perspective of the politics of power and the dynamics of oppression. During his appearance at the Edinburgh Book Festival on 25 August 2006, for example, after reading an interrogation scene from The Birthday Party, Pinter offered a rare "explanation": Pinter "wanted to say that Goldberg and McCann represented the forces in society who wanted to snuff out dissent, to stifle Stanley's voice, to silence him," and that in 1958, "'One thing [the critics who almost unanimously hated the play] got wrong . . . was the whole history of stifling, suffocating and destroying dissent. Not too long before, the Gestapo had represented order, discipline, family life, obligation — and anyone who disagreed with that was in trouble.'"Qtd. by Lesley McDowell, "Book Festival Reviews: Pinter at 75: The Anger Still Burns: Harold Pinter," The Scotsman 26 Aug. 2006: 5 (updated 27 Aug. 2006), accessed 31 Aug. 2006. In both his writing and his public speaking, as McDowell observes, Pinter's precision of language is immensely political. Twist words like "democracy" and "freedom", as he believes Blair and Bush have done over Iraq, and hundreds of thousands of people die.

Earlier this year [March 2006], when he was presented with the European Theatre Prize in Turin, Pinter said he intended to spend the rest of his life railing against the United States. Surely, asked chair Ramona Koval, he was doomed to fail?

"Oh yes — me against the United States!" he said, laughing along with the audience at the absurdity, before adding: "But I can't stop reacting to what is done in our name, and what is being done in the name of freedom and democracy is disgusting." (qtd. by McDowell)

Honors

Pinter was appointed CBE in 1966 and became a Companion of Honour in 2002 (having previously declined a knighthood in 1996). He has also received the 1995 David Cohen British Literature Prize, in recognition of a lifetime's achievement in literature, the 1996 Laurence Olivier Special Award for a lifetime's achievement in the theater; a 2001 World Leaders Award for "creative genius"; the 2004 Wilfred Owen Award for Poetry—"in recognition of Pinter's lifelong contribution to literature, 'and specifically for his collection of poetry entitled War, published in 2003,'" and the Europe Theatre Prize, in recognition of lifetime achievements pertaining to drama and theater (conferred March 2006).Wilfred Owen Association Newsletter 4 Aug. 2004; and the Europe Theatre Prize--X Ed. (8-12 Mar. 2006); see espec. "Letter of Motivation". NB: More fully-complete lists of Pinter's many other awards, including several honorary degrees from universities around the world, appear in the section on Pinter's "Biography" posted online at his official website HaroldPinter.org and in published chronologies of his career. See also his Nobel Prize Bio-bibliography, notably: Baker and Ross; Gordon (ed.), Pinter at 70; Merritt (comp.), "Harold Pinter Bibliography"; and webpages of The Harold Pinter Society. Updates are generally listed on HaroldPinter.org.

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2005

On 13 October 2005 the Swedish Academy announced that it had decided to award the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2005 to "Harold Pinter," "who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms."Qtd. in press release, 13 Oct. 2005, online posting, Nobel Prize official website. The press release accompanied its recorded press conference. (Audio and video streaming media files of the press conference and related interviews are accessible on the official websites of the Nobel Prize and the Swedish Academy.) Nobel Week, including the Nobel Prize Awards Ceremony in Stockholm and related events throughout Scandinavia, occurred early in December 2005.

Due to concerns about his health, Pinter and his family could not attend the Awards Ceremony and related events of Nobel Week. After the Academy notified him of his award, he had arranged for his publisher (Stephen Page of Faber and Faber) to accept his Nobel Diploma and Nobel Medal at the Awards Ceremony scheduled for 10 December, but he had still planned to travel to Stockholm, to present his lecture in person a few days earlier.See "Publisher to Stand In for Pinter at Nobel Ceremony." In November, however, he was hospitalized for a rare mouth infection, and his doctor barred such travel. While still hospitalized, Pinter went to a Channel Four studio to videotape his Nobel Lecture: "Art, Truth & Politics," which was projected on three large screens at the Swedish Academy on 7 December 2005.See Lyall, "Playwright Takes a Prize and a Jab at U.S." The video was simultaneously broadcast, introduced by friend and fellow playwright David Hare, that evening on Channel Four in the UK as well. Subsequently, the full text and streaming video formats were posted for the public on the Nobel Prize and Swedish Academy official websites.These formats of Pinter's Nobel Lecture have been widely cited, quoted, and distributed by print and online media and the source of much commentary and debate. For selected commentary about and later published versions of "Art, Truth & Politics," see References.

Art, Truth & Politics: The Nobel Lecture

In his controversial Nobel Lecture "Art, Truth & Politics," speaking with obvious difficulty while seated in a wheelchair, Pinter distinguishes between the search for truth in art and the avoidance of truth in politics."Art, Truth, & Politics:The Nobel Lecture." He asserts:Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory [of the artist] since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed. As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al-Qaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true. The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it. Charging the United States with having "supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War," leading to "hundreds of thousands of deaths," Pinter asks: "Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy?" Then he answers his own question: "The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it."

Revisiting arguments from his political essays and speeches of the past decade, Pinter reiterates:It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.'In imagery recalling his description of "speech" as "a constant stratagem to cover nakedness,"In his 1962 speech to the National Student Drama Festival in Bristol, in an often-quoted passage, Pinter observes:There are two silences. One when no word is spoken. The other when perhaps a torrent of language is being employed. This speech is speaking of a language locked beneath it. That is its continual reference. The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its place. When true silence falls we are still left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness. ("Writing for the Theatre," rpt. in Various Voices 24-25) Pinter adds:It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.Toward the end of the lecture, after reading two poems referring to "blood in the streets," "deaths," "dead bodies," and "death" by fellow Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda and himself, in a whimsically-humble gesture, Pinter offers to "volunteer" for the "job" of "speech writer" for President George W. Bush, penning a ruthless message of fierce aggression masquerading as moral struggle of good versus evil yet finally proferring the "authority" of his (Bush's) "fist". (The 23 June 2006 Newsnight program featuring Wark's interview of Pinter presents a video clip of his subsequent reading of "Bush's speech" before a later audience in London.) Pinter demands prosecution of Tony Blair in the International Criminal Court, while pointing out, with irony, that he would do the same for George W. Bush if Bush had not so shrewedly refused to "ratify" that Court. Pinter concludes his Nobel Lecture with a call for "unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies" as "a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all," one which he regards as "in fact mandatory," for, he warns, "If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us — the dignity of man."Online posting of the full text of Pinter's Nobel Lecture.

Miscellaneous

• Chairman of the Gaieties Cricket Club, Pinter has called cricket one of his three great "loves." The other "two" are "love" (of women) and "writing" (Gussow, Conversations with Pinter 28-29). "Running" (as a teenage sprinter [29]) and "reading" are two other pleasures that he mentions at times in interviews.

• Pinter is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society.

• On the day his Nobel Prize was announced, 13 October 2005, the Sky News reader saw his name and erroneously reported him dead. It was widely known that he had been battling esophageal cancer since 2002 and that he had fallen and injured his head in Dublin, upon returning from the Gate Theatre festival celebrating his 75th birthday that previous weekend; that knowledge may have led to her mistaken assumption. When interviewed about his reaction to the Nobel Prize announcement by Billington, Pinter joked: "I was told today that one of the Sky channels said this morning that 'Harold Pinter is dead[.'] Then they changed their mind and said, 'No, he's won the Nobel prize.' So I've risen from the dead."Qtd. in Billington, comp., "'They've said you've a call from the Nobel Committee. I said, Why?'"

• "That [Harold Pinter] occupies a position as a modern classic is illustrated by his name entering the language as an adjective used to describe a particular atmosphere and environment in drama: 'Pinteresque'" ("Bio-bibliography"), placing him in the company of authors considered unique or influential enough to elicit eponymous adjectives. Susan Harris Smith observes: "The term 'Pinteresque' has had an established place in the English language for almost thirty years. The OED defines it as 'of or relating to the British playwright, Harold Pinter, or his works[';] thus, like a snake swallowing its own tail the definition forms the impenetrable logic of a closed circle and begs the tricky question of what the word specifically means" (103). The Online OED (2006) defines Pinteresque more explicitly: "Resembling or characteristic of his plays. . . . Pinter's plays are typically characterized by implications of threat and strong feeling produced through colloquial language, apparent triviality, and long pauses."Cf. another version of the OED cited in the BBC press release about Pinter at the BBC (10 Oct. 2002): "[']Pinteresque pin-ter-esk', adj. in the style of the characters, situations, etc., of the plays of Harold Pinter, 20th-cent. English dramatist, marked esp. by halting dialogue, uncertainty of identity, and air of menace." The "Draft Revision" (June 2005) of this entry in the Oxford English Dictionary Online (2006) is: Pinteresque, adj. (and n.)

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