Book description
Michael Billington's engrossing biography examines Pinter's work in
the context of his life. Through extended conversations with Pinter
and interviews with his friends and colleagues, Billington creates a
portrait of the man as well as the artist, from Pinter's Hackney
childhood to his Nobel Prize, discussing his writing for stage and
screen, as well as his fiction and poetry, his acting and directing,
his political activity, his friendships, his two marriages and his
passion for cricket. He emerges as a man of infinite complexity whose
imaginative world is shaped by his private character. This new edition
includes a full transcript of the Nobel lecture, as well as an
additional chapter written in the aftermath of Harold Pinter's death
in December 2008. 'The foremost representative of British drama in the
second half of the twentieth century.' The Swedish Academy citation on
awarding Harold Pinter the Nobel Prize for Literature, 2005
'Enthralling... An open-sesame into Pinter's work... A valuable book.
And absorbing: I found it virtually unputdownable.' Financial Times
'No reader of this book will doubt that its subject is a man of the
highest artistic stature.' Sunday Telegraph
Harold Pinter was born in London in 1930. He married Antonia Fraser
in 1980. In 1995 he won the David Cohen British Literature Prize,
awarded for a lifetime s achievement in literature. In 1996 he was
given the Laurence Olivier Award for a lifetime s achievement in
theatre. In 2002 he was made a Companion of Honour for services to
literature. In 2005 he received the Wilfred Owen Award for Poetry, the
Franz Kafka Award (Prague) and the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 2006
he was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize, and in 2007 the highest French
honour, the Légion d'honneur. He died in December 2008. Michael
Billington has been the Guardian theatre critic since 1971. He is a
regular broadcaster on radio and television arts programmes. His
previous books are on Peggy Ashcroft, Ken Dodd, Alan Ayckbourn and Tom
Stoppard. He has also published a collection of theatre criticism, One
Night Stands, and he edited Directors on  Twelfth Night . He is a
Visiting Professor at King s College London and an Honorary Fellow of
St Catherine s College, Oxford.
