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Death of Heath Ledger

Main article: Heath Ledger

Ledger at the 2006 Berlin International Film Festival

The Death of Heath Ledger (4 April 1979 – 22 January 2008), an Academy Award-nominated Australian television and film actor, occurred at the age of 28, from an accidental "toxic combination of prescription drugs." The investigation into the circumstances of his death occurred amid extended speculation and concerns expressed internationally throughout the news media and among his family, friends, and fans. His untimely death has had ongoing consequences for his work then in progress or not yet released and on the disposition of his estate. On 23 December 2008, eleven months after it occurred, the Associated Press announced that Ledger's death was "voted 2008's top entertainment story by U.S. newspaper and broadcast editors surveyed by The Associated Press."

Background

At about 2:45 p.m. (EST), on 22 January 2008, Ledger was found unconscious in his bed by his housekeeper, Teresa Solomon, and his masseuse, Diana Wolozin, in his fourth-floor loft apartment at 421 Broome Street in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan.

According to the police, Wolozin, who had arrived early for a 3:00 p.m. appointment with Ledger, called Ledger's friend, actress Mary-Kate Olsen, for help. Olsen, who was in California, directed a New York City private security guard to go to the scene. At 3:26 p.m., "[fewer] than 15 minutes after Wolozin first saw him in bed and only a few moments" after first calling Olsen and then calling her a second time to express her fears that Ledger was dead, Wolozin telephoned 9-1-1 "to say that Mr. Ledger was not breathing." At the urging of the 9-1-1 operator, Wolozin administered CPR, which was unsuccessful in reviving him.

Emergency medical technicians (EMT) arrived seven minutes later, at 3:33 p.m. ("at almost exactly the same moment as a private security guard summoned by Ms. Olsen"), but were also unable to revive him. At 3:36 p.m., Ledger was pronounced dead and his body removed from the apartment.

Memorial tributes and services

Memorial for Heath Ledger, outside 421 Broome Street, SoHo, Manhattan, 23 January 2008

As the news of Ledger's death became public, throughout the night of 22 January 2008, and the next day, media crews, mourners, fans, and other onlookers began gathering outside his apartment building, with some leaving flowers or other memorial tributes.

On 23 January 2008, at 10:50 a.m., Australian time, Ledger's parents and sister appeared outside his mother's house in Applecross, a riverside suburb of Perth, and read a short statement to the media expressing their grief and desire for privacy. Within the next few days, memorial tributes were communicated by family members, Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd, Deputy Premier of Western Australia Eric Ripper, Warner Bros. (distributor of The Dark Knight), and thousands of Ledger's fans around the world.

Several actors made statements expressing their sorrow at Ledger's death, including Daniel Day-Lewis, who dedicated his Screen Actors Guild Award to Ledger, saying that he was inspired by Ledger's acting; Day-Lewis praised Ledger's performances in Monster's Ball and Brokeback Mountain, describing the latter as "unique, perfect."

On 1 February 2008, in her first public statement after Ledger's death, Michelle Williams expressed her heartbreak and described Ledger's spirit as surviving in their daughter.

After attending private memorial ceremonies in Los Angeles, Ledger's family members returned with his body to Perth.

On 9 February 2008, a memorial service attended by several hundred invited guests was held at Penrhos College, garnering considerable press attention; afterward Ledger's body was cremated at Fremantle Cemetery, followed by a private service attended by only 10 closest family members, with his ashes to be interred later in a family plot at Karrakatta Cemetery, next to two of his grandparents. Later that night, his family and friends gathered for a wake on Cottesloe Beach.

Autopsy and toxicological analysis

After two weeks of intense media speculation about possible causes of Ledger's death, on 6 February 2008, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York released its conclusions, based on an initial autopsy of 23 January 2008, and a subsequent complete toxicological analysis. The report concludes, in part, "Mr. Heath Ledger died as the result of acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine." It also states definitively: "We have concluded that the manner of death is accident, resulting from the abuse of prescription medications." The medications found in the toxicological analysis are commonly prescribed in the United States for insomnia, anxiety, depression, pain, and/or cold symptoms. Although the Associated Press and other media reported that "police estimate Ledger's time of death between 1 p.m. and 2:45 p.m." (on 22 January 2008), the Medical Examiner's Office announced that it would not be publicly disclosing the official estimated time of death. The official announcement of the cause and manner of Ledger's death heightened concerns about the growing problems of prescription drug abuse or misuse and Combined Drug Intoxication (CDI).

Federal investigation

Late in February 2008, a DEA investigation of medical professionals relating to Ledger's death exonerated two American physicians, who practice in Los Angeles and Houston, of any wrongdoing, determining that "the doctors in question had prescribed Ledger other medications – not the pills that killed him."

On 4 August 2008, citing unnamed sources, Murray Weiss, of the New York Post, first reported that Mary-Kate Olsen had "refused [through her attorney, Michael C. Miller] to be interviewed by federal investigators probing the accidental drug death of her close friend Heath Ledger ... [without] ... immunity from prosecution," and that, when asked about the matter, Miller at first declined further comment. Later that day, after the police confirmed the gist of Weiss's account to the Associated Press, Miller issued a statement denying that Olsen supplied Ledger with the drugs causing his death and asserting that she did not know their source." In his statement, Miller said specifically: "Despite tabloid speculation, Mary-Kate Olsen had nothing whatsoever to do with the drugs found in Heath Ledger's home or his body, and she does not know where he obtained them," emphasizing that media "descriptions [attributed to an unidentified source] are incomplete and inaccurate."

After a flurry of further media speculation, on 6 August 2008, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan closed its investigation into Ledger's death without filing any charges and rendering moot its subpoena of Olsen. With the clearing of the two doctors and Olsen, and the closing of the investigation because the prosecutors in the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office "don't believe there's a viable target," it is still not known how Ledger obtained the oxycodone and hydrocodone in the lethal drug combination that killed him.

On 23 December 2008, eleven months after Ledger's death, Jake Coyle, writing for the Associated Press, announced that "Heath Ledger's death was voted 2008's top entertainment story by U.S. newspaper and broadcast editors surveyed by The Associated Press," as it resulted in: "shock and confusion" about "the circumstances"; the ruling of the death an accident caused by "a toxic combination of prescription drugs"; and the continuation of "his legacy in [his] roundly acclaimed performance as the Joker in the year's biggest box office hit 'The Dark Knight.' "

Controversy over will

After Ledger's death, in response to some press reports about his will, filed in New York City on 28 February 2008, and his daughter's access to his financial legacy, his father, Kim Ledger, said that he considered the financial well-being of his granddaughter Matilda Rose the Ledger family's "absolute priority" and her mother, Michelle Williams, "an integral part of our family," adding "They will be taken care of and that's how Heath would want it to be." Some of Ledger's relatives may be challenging the legal status of his will signed in 2003, prior to his involvement with Williams and the birth of their daughter and not updated to include them, which divides half of his estate between his parents and half among his siblings; they claim that there is a second, unsigned will, which leaves most of that estate to Matilda Rose. Williams' father, Larry Williams, has also joined the controversy about Ledger's will as it was filed in New York City soon after his death.

On 31 March 2008, stimulating another controversy pertaining to Ledger's estate, Gemma Jones and Janet Fife-Yeomans published an "Exclusive" report, in The Daily Telegraph, citing Ledger's uncle Haydn Ledger and other family members, who "believe the late actor may have fathered a secret love child" when he was 17, and stating that "If it is confirmed that Ledger is the girl's biological father, it could split his multi-million dollar estate between ... Matilda Rose ... and his secret love child." A few days later, reports citing telephone interviews with Ledger's uncles Haydn and Mike Ledger and the family of the other little girl, published in OK! and Us Weekly, "denied" those "claims", with Ledger's uncles and the little girl's mother and stepfather describing them as unfounded "rumors" distorted and exaggerated by the media.

On 15 July 2008, Fife-Yeomans reported further, via Australian News Limited, that "While Ledger left everything to his parents and three sisters, it is understood they have legal advice that under WA law, Matilda Rose is entitled to the lion's share" of his estate; its executors, Kim Ledger's former business colleague Robert John Collins and Geraldton accountant William Mark Dyson, "have applied for probate in the West Australian Supreme Court in Perth, advertising "for 'creditors and other persons' having claims on the estate to lodge them by 11 August 2008 ... to ensure all debts are paid before the estate is distributed...." According to this report by Fife-Yeomans, earlier reports citing Ledger's uncles, and subsequent reports citing Ledger's father, which do not include his actual posthumous earnings, "his entire fortune, mostly held in Australian trusts, is likely to be worth up to [A]$20 million."

On 27 September 2008, Ledger's father Kim stated that "the family has agreed to leave the [US]$16.3 million fortune to Matilda," adding: "There is no claim. Our family has gifted everything to Matilda." In October 2008, Forbes.com estimated Ledger's annual earnings from October 2007 through October 2008 –– including his posthumous share of The Dark Knight 's gross income of "[US]$991 million in box office revenue worldwide" –– as "[US]$20 million."

See also

• Heath Ledger#Posthumous films

Additional resources

Main article: Heath Ledger § Additional resources

External links

Main article: Heath Ledger § External links

Harold Pinter=

Harold Pinter, CH, CBE, Nobel Laureate (10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008), was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor, director, poet, author, and political activist considered by many "the most influential and imitated dramatist of his generation."

After publishing poetry as a teenager and acting in school plays, Pinter began his theatrical career in the mid-1950s as a repertory actor using the stage name David Baron. Beginning with his first play, The Room (1957), Pinter's writing career spanned over half a century and produced 29 stage plays; 26 screenplays; many dramatic sketches, radio and TV plays; poetry; one novel; other short fiction; and essays, speeches, and letters—many of whose manuscripts are owned and catalogued by the British Library. His best-known works include The Birthday Party (1957), The Caretaker (1959), The Homecoming (1964), and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted to film, and his screenplay adaptations of others' works, such as The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1970), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Trial (1993), and Sleuth (2007). He directed almost 50 stage, television and film productions. Despite frail health since 2001, he continued to act on stage and screen, performing the title role in a critically-acclaimed production of Samuel Beckett's one-act monologue Krapp's Last Tape for the 50th anniversary season of the Royal Court Theatre, in October 2006.

Pinter's dramas often involve strong conflicts among ambivalent characters who struggle for verbal and territorial dominance and for their own versions of the past; stylistically, these works are marked by theatrical pauses and silences, comedic timing, irony, and menace. Thematically ambiguous, they raise complex issues of individual identity oppressed by social forces, language, and vicissitudes of memory. Although Pinter publicly eschewed applying the term "political theatre" to his own work in 1981, he began writing overtly political plays in the mid-1980s, reflecting his own heightening political interests and changes in his personal life. This "new direction" in his work and his left-wing political activism stimulated additional critical debate about Pinter's politics. Pinter, his work, and his politics have been the subject of voluminous critical commentary.

In addition to the Nobel Prize in Literature and the French Légion d'honneur, Pinter received 19 honorary degrees and numerous other prizes and awards. Academic institutions and performing arts organizations have devoted symposia, festivals, and celebrations to him and his work, in recognition of his cultural influence and achievements across genres and media. In awarding Pinter's Nobel Prize, instigating some public controversy and criticism, the Swedish Academy cited him for being "generally regarded as the foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the 20th century" and noted: "That he 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' "—a word he despised and found meaningless. Two weeks after having to withdraw from the honorary degree ceremony at the Central School of Speech and Drama because of illness and receiving it in absentia, Harold Pinter died from cancer and was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery, in West London.

Biography

Personal background

Pinter was born on 10 October 1930, in Hackney, East London, to "very respectable, Jewish, lower middle class," native English parents of Eastern-European ancestry; his father, Jack Pinter (1902–1997), was a "ladies' tailor" and his mother, Frances (née Moskowitz; 1904–1992), "kept what is called an immaculate house" and was "a wonderful cook" (Pinter, as quoted in Gussow, Conversations with Pinter 103; Billington, Harold Pinter 1–2). 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" (Harold Pinter 1–5). 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" at that time influenced him profoundly. "His prime memories of evacuation today [circa 1994] are of loneliness, bewilderment, separation and loss: themes that are in all his works" (Billington, Harold Pinter 5–10).

Education

Although he was a "solitary" only child, he "discovered his true potential" as a student at Hackney Downs School, the London grammar school "where Pinter spent the formative years from 1944 to 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 the emotional texture of his life" (Billington, Harold Pinter 11; cf. Woolf). Significantly "inspired" by his English teacher, mentor, and friend Joseph Brearley, "Pinter shone at English, wrote for the school magazine and discovered a gift for acting" (Billington, Harold Pinter 10–11). He wrote poetry frequently and published some of it as a teenager, as he has continued to do throughout his career. He played Romeo and Macbeth in 1947 and 1948, in productions directed by Brearley (Billington, Harold Pinter 13–14). He especially enjoyed running and broke the Hackney Downs School sprinting record (Gussow, Conversations with Pinter 28–29).

Sport and friendship

Pinter was an avid cricket enthusiast most of his life, taking his cricket bat with him when he was evacuated as a pre-teenager during the Blitz (Billington, Life and Work 7–9; 410). In 1971 he told Gussow: "one of my main obsessions in life is the game of cricket—I play and watch and read about it all the time" (Conversations with Pinter 25). Being Chairman of the Gaieties Cricket Club and a "lifetime support[er] of the Yorkshire Cricket Club (8), Pinter devoted a section of his official website to "Cricket" ("Gaieties Cricket Club"). One wall of his study is dominated by "A huge portrait of a younger, vigorous Mr. Pinter playing cricket, one of his great passions … The painted Mr. Pinter, poised to swing his bat, has a wicked glint in his eye; testosterone all but flies off the canvas" ("Still Pinteresque" 16 [illus.]). As Billington documents, "Robert Winder observes how even Pinter's passion for cricket was far removed from a jocular, country-house pursuit: 'Harold stands for a different tradition, a more urban and exacting idea of cricket as a bold theatre of aggression' " (Harold Pinter 410).

Other main loves or interests that he mentioned to Gussow, Billington, and other interviewers (in varying order of priority) are family, love (of women) and sex, drinking, writing, and reading. According to Billington, "If 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, worships their resilience and strength. But, in his early work especially, they are often seen as disruptive influences on some pure, Platonic ideal of male friendship: one of the most crucial of all Pinter's lost Edens" (Harold Pinter 10–12).

Early theatrical training and stage experience

Beginning in late 1948, Pinter attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) for two terms, but "loathing" RADA, he missed most of his classes, feigned a nervous breakdown, and dropped out in 1949.

That year he was also "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 (Billington, Harold Pinter 20–25).

He had a "walk-on" role in Dick Whittington and His Cat at the Chesterfield Hippodrome in 1949 to 1950. From January to July 1951, he "endured six months at 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 regional repertory acting jobs in England; from 1953 to 1954, he worked for the Donald Wolfit Company, King's Theatre, Hammersmith, performing eight roles. From 1954 until 1959, 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, Harold Pinter 3, 47–48].) As Batty observes: "Following his brief stint with Wolfit's company in 1953, this was to be Pinter's daily life for five years, and his prime manner of earning a living alongside stints as a waiter, a postman, a bouncer and snow-clearer whilst all the time harbouring ambitions as a poet and writer" (About Pinter 10).

In Pinter: The Player's Playwright, David Thompson "itemises all the performances Pinter gave in the [David] Baron years," including those in English regional repertory companies, nearly twenty-five roles. In October 1989, Pinter told Mel Gussow: "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" (Conversations with Pinter 83). During that period, he also performed occasional roles in his own and others' works (for radio, TV, and film), as he has done more recently.

Marriage and family life

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 (Billington, Harold Pinter 54, 75). Through the early 1970s, Merchant appeared in many of Pinter's works, most notably The Homecoming on stage (1965) and screen (1973), but the marriage was turbulent and began disintegrating in the mid-1960s (252–56). For seven years, from 1962 to 1969, Pinter was engaged in a clandestine affair with Joan Bakewell, which informed his play Betrayal (1978) (264–66). Between 1975 and 1980, he lived with historian Lady Antonia Fraser, wife of Sir Hugh Fraser (272-76), and, in 1975, Merchant filed for divorce ("People").

After the Frasers' divorce became final in 1977 and the Pinters' in 1980, in the third week of October 1980, Pinter married Antonia Fraser. Due to a two-week delay in Merchant's signing the divorce papers, however, the reception had to precede the actual ceremony, originally scheduled "to coincide with Pinter's fiftieth birthday" on 10 October 1980 (271–72).

Unable to overcome her bitterness and grief at the loss of her husband, Vivien Merchant died of acute alcoholism in the first week of October 1982 at the age of 53 (Billington, Harold Pinter 276). According to Billington, who cites Merchant's close friends and Pinter's associates, 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 (276, 345). A reclusive gifted musician and writer (345), Daniel no longer uses the surname Pinter, having adopted instead "his maternal grandmother's maiden name," Brand.

Pinter stated publicly in interviews that he was "very happy" in his second marriage and enjoyed family life with his six adult stepchildren and 17 step-grandchildren (Billington, Harold Pinter 388, 429–30; Dougary), and, after battling cancer for a long period, considered himself "a very lucky man in every respect." According to Lyall, who interviewed him in London for her Sunday New York Times preview of Sleuth, Pinter's "latest work, a slim pamphlet called 'Six Poems for A.,' comprises poems written over 32 years, with 'A' being Lady Antonia. The first of the poems was written in Paris, where she and Pinter travelled soon after they met. More than three decades later the two were rarely apart, and Mr. Pinter turned soft, even cozy, when he talked about his wife" ("Still Pinteresque" 16). In his interview with Lyall, Pinter "acknowledged that his plays––full of infidelity, cruelty, inhumanity, 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' " ("Still Pinteresque" 16).

Career

Further information: Works of Harold Pinter and Characteristics of Harold Pinter's work

Pinter is the author of 29 plays, 15 dramatic sketches, 26 screenplays and film scripts for cinema and television, a novel, and other prose fiction, essays, and speeches, many poems, 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.

1957–2001

The Room (1957)

Pinter's first play, The Room, written in 1957, was a student production at the University of Bristol, "commissioned" and directed by his good friend (later acclaimed) actor Henry Woolf, who also originated the role of Mr. Kidd (which he reprised in 2001 and 2007). After 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. To mark and celebrate the 50th anniversary of that first production of The Room, Woolf reprised his role of Mr. Kidd, as well as his role of the Man in Pinter's play Monologue, in April 2007, as part of an international conference at the University of Leeds, Artist and Citizen: 50 Years of Performing Pinter.

"Comedies of menace"

The Birthday Party (1957), Pinter's second play and among his best-known, was initially both a commercial and critical disaster, despite a rave 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 (Hobson, "The Screw Turns Again"). Critical accounts often quote Hobson's prophetic words:

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 career (Billington, Harold Pinter 85); for example, in their September 1993 interview, Pinter told the New York Times critic Mel Gussow: "I felt pretty discouraged before Hobson. He had a tremendous influence on my life" (141).

In a review published in 1958, borrowing from the subtitle of The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace, a play by David Campton (1924–2006), critic Irving Wardle 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. 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 the influence of Samuel Beckett, particularly on his early work (Billington, Harold Pinter 64, 65, 84, 197, 251); they became friends (354), sending each other drafts of their works in progress for comments (Wark).

In 1964, four years after the success of The Caretaker in 1960, which established Pinter's theatrical reputation (Jones), 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) and well received (Merritt, Pinter in Play 18, 219–20). By the time Peter Hall's London production of The Homecoming (1964) reached Broadway (1967), Harold Pinter had become a celebrity playwright, and the play garnered four Tony awards, among other awards ("Harold Pinter" at the Internet Broadway Database).

"Memory plays"

From the late sixties through the early eighties, Pinter wrote Landscape (1968), Silence (1969), "Night" (1969), Old Times (1971), No Man's Land (1975), The Proust Screenplay (1977), Betrayal (1978), Family Voices (1981), and A Kind of Alaska (1982), all of which dramatize complex ambiguities, elegiac mysteries, comic vagaries, and other "quicksand"-like characteristics of memory and which critics sometimes categorize as Pinter's "memory plays".

Pinter's more-recent plays Party Time (1991), Moonlight (1993), Ashes to Ashes (1996), and Celebration (2000) draw upon some features of his "memory" dramaturgy in their focus on the past in the present, but they have personal and political resonances and other tonal differences from these more-clearly-identifiable "memory plays" (Billington, Harold Pinter; Batty; Grimes; Baker).

Pinter as director

Pinter began to direct more frequently during the 1970s, becoming an associate director of the National Theatre (NT) in 1973, and he directed almost 50 productions of his own and others' plays for stage, film, and television. As a director, Pinter helmed productions of work by Simon Gray ten times, including directing the stage premières of Butley (1971), 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), and the film, Butley (1974), several of which starred Alan Bates (1934–2003), who originated (on stage and screen) the role of Mick in Pinter's first commercial success, The Caretaker (1960), and played the roles of Nicholas in One for the Road and the cab driver in Victoria Station in Pinter's own double-bill production at the Lyric Hammersmith in 1984.

Pinter's overtly-political plays

During the 1980s, after the three-year period of "creative blankness in the early 1980s" following his marriage to Lady Antonia Fraser and the death of Vivien Merchant, as mentioned by Billington (Harold Pinter 258), Pinter's plays tended to become shorter and more overtly political, serving as critiques of oppression, torture, and other abuses of human rights (Merritt, Pinter in Play xi–xv, 170–209, Grimes 19), linked by the apparent "invulnerability of power" (Grimes 119). After writing the brief dramatic sketch Precisely (1983), a duologue between two bureaucrats exposing the absurd power politics of mutual nuclear annihilation and deterrence, he wrote his first full-length overtly-political one-act play, One for the Road (1984). 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" for power and powerlessness, the later ones present literal "realities" of power and its abuse. Grimes proposes, "If it is too much to say that Pinter faults himself for his earlier political inactivity, his political theater dramatizes the interplay and conflict of the opposing poles of involvement and disengagement" (19). He also wrote the political satire Party Time, first as a play for the stage (Faber and Faber, 1991), published in the U.S. edition along with The New World Order (Grove P, 1993; Grimes 101–28), and then revised and adapted it as a television screenplay (Faber and Faber, 1994; Baker and Ross 100–102). From 1992 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).

Lincoln Center Harold Pinter Festival (Summer 2001)

In July and August 2001, a Harold Pinter Festival celebrating his work curated by Michael Colgan, artistic director of the Gate Theatre, Dublin, was held at Lincoln Center in New York City, in which he participated 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).

Harold Pinter Homage at World Leaders (Autumn 2001)

In October 2001, as part of the "Harold Pinter Homage" at the World Leaders Festival of Creative Genius, at Harbourfront Centre, in Toronto, following the reception and during the dinner honouring him, he presented a dramatic reading of Celebration (2000) and also participated in a public interview as part of the International Festival of Authors ("Harold Pinter Added to IFOA Lineup"; "Travel Advisory").

Later that year, Pinter's collaboration with director Di Trevis resulted in their stage adaptation of his as-yet unfilmed 1972 work The Proust Screenplay, entitled Remembrance of Things Past (both based on Marcel Proust's famous seven-volume novel In Search of Lost Time), being produced at the National Theatre, in London. There was also a revival of The Caretaker in the West End.

2001–2008

Late in 2001, Pinter was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, for which he underwent a successful operation and chemotherapy in 2002 (Billington, Harold Pinter 413–16). 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 production of his dramatic sketches at the National Theatre (415–16), 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 "engaged" as "a citizen" (Merritt, Pinter in Play 179), Pinter continued to write and present politically-charged poetry, essays, speeches and two new screenplay adaptations of plays, based on Shakespeare's King Lear (completed in 2000 but unfilmed) and on Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth (written in 2005, with revisions completed later for the 2007 film Sleuth). Pinter's most recent stage play, Celebration (2000), is a social satire, with fewer political resonances than such plays as One for the Road (1984), Mountain Language (1988), Party Time (1991), and Ashes to Ashes (1996), the last three of which extend expressionistic aspects of Pinter's "memory plays" (Billington, Harold Pinter; Grimes). His most recent dramatic work for radio, Voices (2005), a collaboration with composer James Clarke, adapting such selected works by Pinter to music, premièred on BBC Radio 3 on his 75th birthday (10 October 2005), three days before the October 13th announcement that he had won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature (Billington, Harold Pinter 420).

Public announcement of "retirement" from playwriting (February 2005)

On 28 February 2005, in an interview with Mark Lawson on the BBC Radio 4 programme Front Row, Pinter announced publicly that he would stop 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."

In interviews and correspondence, he vowed to " 'keep fighting' " politically. Pinter remained committed to writing and publishing poetry (e.g., his poems "The Special Relationship", "Laughter", and "The Watcher") and to continuing political pressure against the "status quo," battling politically what he considered social injustices. Personally, he was also battling post-oesophageal cancer bouts of ill health, including "a rare skin disease called pemphigus"—that "very, very mysterious skin condition which emanated from the Brazilian jungle", as Pinter described it (Qtd. in Billington, " 'I've written' ")—and "a form of septicaemia which afflict[ed] his feet and [made] movement slow and laborious" (Billington, Harold Pinter 394; cf. Lyall, "Still Pinteresque"). Yet, despite his illnesses, Pinter completed his screenplay for Sleuth in 2005 (Billington, Harold Pinter 418–20).

Europe Theatre Prize (March 2006)

In their public interview at the Europe Theatre Prize ceremony in Turin, Italy, which was part of the cultural program of the XX Winter Olympic Games, including an evening of dramatic readings curated by the Gate Theatre's artistic director Michael Colgan (BWW News Desk), Billington asked Pinter, "Is the itch to put pen to paper still there?" He replied, "Yes. It's just a question of what the form is … I've been writing poetry since my youth and I'm sure I'll keep on writing it till I conk out. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I've written 29 damn plays. Isn't that enough?" (Billington, " 'I've written' "). In response, audience members shouted "in unison" a resounding No, urging him to keep writing (Merritt, "Europe Theatre Prize Celebration").

BAFTA Celebration (June 2006)

In June 2006, prevailing over persistent health challenges, Billington observes in "Let's Keep Fighting" (his updated "Afterword" to Harold Pinter), Pinter attended "a celebration of his work in cinema organised by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts," for which his friend and fellow playwright David Hare "organised a brilliant selection of film clips ... [saying] 'To jump back into the world of Pinter's movies ... is to remind yourself of a literate mainstream cinema, focused as much as Bergman's is on the human face, in which tension is maintained by a carefully crafted mix of image and dialogue' " (429).

Interview on Newsnight (June 2006)

Pinter occasionally left open the possibility that if a compelling dramatic "image" were to come to mind (though "not likely"), he would perhaps have pursued it. After making this point, with Rupert Graves in another location on screen, Pinter performed a dramatic reading of his "new work," Apart From That, at the end of his June 2006 interview with Wark, which was broadcast live on Newsnight. This "very funny" dramatic sketch was inspired by Pinter's strong aversion to mobile telephones; "as two people trade banalities over their mobile phones there is a hint of something ominous and unspoken behind the clichéd chat" (Billington, Harold Pinter 429).

Krapp's Last Tape (October 2006)

Further information: Krapp's Last Tape § Notable performances of Krapp

In an account of Pinter's public interview conducted by Ramona Koval at the Edinburgh Book Festival "Meet the Author" in late August 2006, Robinson reports: "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.' It appeared to Robinson that "despite giving up writing [Pinter] will carry on his acting career." From another perspective, however, as Eden and Walker observe: "So keenly is Harold Pinter relishing his return to the stage this autumn [in Samuel Beckett's one-act monologue Krapp's Last Tape] that he has put his literary career on the back burner." Pinter said: "It's a great challenge and I'm going to have a crack at it" (Qtd. in Robinson).

After returning to London from Edinburgh, in September 2006, he began rehearsing for his performance of the role of Krapp, which, the next month, he performed from a motorized wheelchair in a limited run at the Royal Court Theatre to sold-out audiences and "ecstatic" critical reviews (Billington, "Theatre: Krapp's Last Tape" and Harold Pinter 429–30).

The production of only nine performances, from 12 October, two days after Pinter's 76th birthday, to 24 October 2006, was the most prized ticket in London during the 50th-anniversary celebration season of the Royal Court Theatre; his performances sold out on the first morning of general ticket sales (4 September 2006). One performance was filmed, produced on DVD, and shown on BBC Four on 21 June 2007.

Pinter: A Celebration (October–November 2006)

Sheffield Theatres hosted Pinter: A Celebration for a full month (11 Oct.–11 Nov. 2006). The program featured 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, and 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 BBC Two 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-minute Nobel Prize Lecture."

50th anniversary West-End revival of The Dumb Waiter; Celebration (February 2007)

Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of The Dumb Waiter, Lee Evans and Jason Isaacs starred as Gus and Ben in "a major West end revival," directed by Harry Burton, "in a limited seven week run" at the Trafalgar Studios, from 2 February 2007 through 24 March 2007. John Crowley's film version of Pinter's play Celebration (2000) was shown on More 4 (Channel 4, UK), in late February 2007, "with a cast including James Bolam, Janie Dee, Colin Firth, James Fox, Michael Gambon, Julia McKenzie, Sophie Okonedo, Stephen Rea and Penelope Wilton."

Radio broadcast of The Homecoming (March 2007)

On 18 March 2007, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a new radio production of The Homecoming, directed by Thea Sharrock and produced by Martin J. Smith, with Pinter performing the role of Max (for the first time; he had previously played Lenny on stage in 1964), Michael Gambon as Max's brother Sam, Rupert Graves as Teddy, Samuel West as Lenny, James Alexandrou as Joey, and Gina McKee as Ruth (Martin J. Smith; West).

Revival of The Hothouse (From 11 July 2007)

A revival of The Hothouse, directed by Ian Rickson, with a cast including Stephen Moore (Roote), Lia Williams (Miss Cutts), and Henry Woolf (Tubb), among others, opened at the Royal National Theatre, in London, on 11 July 2007, playing concurrently with a revival of Betrayal at the Donmar Warehouse, also starring Samuel West (Robert), opposite Toby Stephens (Jerry) and Dervla Kirwan (Emma) and directed by Roger Michell (West).

Sleuth (August 2007)

Pinter's screenplay adaptation of the 1970 Tony Award-winning play Sleuth, by Anthony Shaffer, is the basis for the 2007 film Sleuth, directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Michael Caine (in the role of Andrew Wyke, originally played by Laurence Olivier) and Jude Law (in the role of Milo Tindle, originally played by Caine). Law also produced it. Scheduled for release on 12 October, the film debuted at the 64th Venice International Film Festival on 31 August 2007 and was screened at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival on 10 September.

Broadway revival of The Homecoming (December 2007–April 2008)

A Broadway revival of The Homecoming, starring James Frain as Teddy, Ian McShane as Max, Raul Esparza as Lenny, Michael McKean as Sam, and Eve Best as Ruth, and directed by Daniel Sullivan, opened on 16 December 2007, for a "20-week limited engagement … through 13 April 2008" at the Cort Theatre (Gans; Horwitz).

50th anniversary revival of The Birthday Party (8–24 May 2008)

Further information: The Birthday Party (play) § Selected production history, and The Birthday Party (play) § External links

The Lyric Hammersmith celebrated the play's 50th anniversary with a revival, directed by artistic director David Farr, and related events from 8 to 24 May 2008, including a gala performance and reception hosted by Harold Pinter on 19 May 2008, exactly fifty years after its London première there ("The Birthday Party: 8–24 May").

No Man's Land at the Gate Theatre, Dublin (August 2008), and the Duke of York's Theatre, London (through 3 January 2009)

Further information: No Man's Land (play) § Production history

A revival of No Man's Land (1975), directed by Rupert Goold, opened at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, whose artistic director is Michael Colgan, in August 2008, and then transferred to the Duke of York's Theatre, London, where it played through Saturday, 3 January 2009 (BWW News Desk).

On the Monday before Christmas 2008, during its break, Pinter "was admitted to Hammersmith Hospital," and he died there two days later, on Wednesday, Christmas Eve ("Pinter Ends"). On Friday, 26 December, when the production reopened, expressing great sadness and appreciation for their playwright, the actors paid tribute to Pinter from the stage, with Gambon reading Hirst's speech about his "photograph album" from Act Two that, in August, Pinter had selected for him to read at his funeral, ending with a standing ovation from the audience, many of whom were in tears:

“

I might even show you my photograph album. You might even see a face in it which might remind you of your own, of what you once were. You might see faces of others, in shadow, or cheeks of others, turning, or jaws, or backs of necks, or eyes, dark under hats, which might remind you of others, whom once you knew, whom you thought long dead, but from whom you will still receive a sidelong glance, if you can face the good ghost. Allow the love of the good ghost. They possess all that emotion . . . trapped. Bow to it. It will assuredly never release them, but who knows . . . what relief . . . it may give them . . . who knows how they may quicken . . . in their chains, in their glass jars. You think it cruel . . . to quicken them, when they are fixed, imprisoned? No . . . no. Deeply, deeply, they wish to respond to your touch, to your look, and when you smile, their joy . . . is unbounded. And so I say to you, tender the dead, as you would yourself be tendered, now, in what you would describe as your life. (69–70 of No Man's Land, in Four Plays)

”

Posthumous events

Pinter's funeral (31 December 2008)

Several accounts of the private funeral held for Pinter, a "half-hour ceremony conducted around the graveside" at Kensal Green Cemetery, on Wednesday afternoon, 31 December 2008, the week after his death, describe it as "directed" or "conducted" or "scripted" by Pinter himself, perhaps recalling the Father who speaks "from the grave" in his play Family Voices. As Pinter's official biographer Michael Billington, who was among approximately 50 family and friends who attended the graveside ceremony, reports: "As recently as last August [2008], [Pinter] had sat down with his wife, Antonia Fraser, and selected the readings he wanted for his funeral" to be read by his family and friends. Michael Gambon read "a speech he nightly delivers on stage in No Man's Land, in which Hirst pays tribute to the emotion trapped in photo albums and asks us to 'tender the dead, as you would yourself be tendered, now, in what you would describe as your life' " (as qtd. above) and the poem "Death" (1997), which Pinter read toward the end of his 2005 Nobel Lecture, "Art, Truth and Politics"; Penelope Wilton "delivered with impeccable gravitas" a passage ending T. S. Eliot's "Little Gidding" (1942), the last of his Four Quartets: "So, while the light falls/On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel,/History is now and England"; Matthew Burton, an actor, director, and member of Pinter's cricket team The Gaieties, "read Pinter's favourite cricket poem, Francis Thompson's At Lord's, in which the run-stealers eternally flicker to and fro"; and Stella Powell-Jones, Pinter's step-granddaughter, "read beautifully a love poem dedicated to [her grandmother] Antonia Fraser It Is Here, recalling the coup de foudre at Pinter's first meeting with his future wife." According to the Mail Online, "The only departure from his 'script' was at the end, when a tearful Antonia stepped forward to his grave and said: 'I always get this quotation wrong. I hope I get it right today,' " going on to quote Horatio's speech after the death of Prince Hamlet: "Good night sweet prince:/And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!"

Theatrical dimming of lights

The night before Pinter's New Year's Eve burial, theatre marquees on Broadway dimmed their lights for about a minute in tribute ("Friends"), and the final night of No Man's Land at the Duke of York's Theatre, on 3 January 2009, starting at 6:30 p.m., all of the Ambassador Theatre Group in the West End also dimmed their lights for a full hour to honour the playwright (Smith, "Pinter to Be Honoured").

Public memorial

A "more public commemoration" is being planned, with friends and family proposing that Pinter "be accorded the honour of a memorial in Westminster Abbey's 'Poets' Corner'," where one of Pinter's most revered poets, Wilfred Owen, is commemorated among many others, though, reportedly, their proposal may be meeting some resistance due to Pinter's " 'anti-religious views' " (Eden).

Retrospective (2010)

Colgan, who helmed "four major festivals of [Pinter's] work" starting in 1994, including the 2001 Harold Pinter Festival, which he curated at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, in New York City, "is preparing for another major retrospective of his work in Dublin to take place in 2010," marking Pinter's 80th birthday (BWW News Desk).

Civic activities and political activism

Political development

Opposed to the politics of the Cold War, in 1946 to 1947, when he was eighteen, Pinter was a conscientious objector, refusing compulsory conscription; however, he was not a pacifist, as he told Billington and others that, if he had been old enough at the time, he would have fought against the Nazis in World War II (Harold Pinter 21–24, 92, & 286). Although Pinter seemed to express ambivalence about "politicians" in his 1966 Paris Review interview with Lawrence M. Bensky, he had actually been an early member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the United Kingdom 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 ("Playwrights in Apartheid Protest") and in subsequent related campaigns (Mbeki; Reddy).

Later political views

In his last twenty-five years, Pinter increasingly focused his essays, speeches, interviews, literary readings, and other public appearances directly on contemporary political issues. He strongly opposed the 1991 Gulf War, the 1999 NATO bombing campaign in Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War, the United States' 2001 War in Afghanistan, and the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.

In accepting an honorary degree at the University of Turin (27 November 2002), he stated: "I believe that [the United States] will [attack Iraq] not only to take control of Iraqi oil, but also because the American administration is now a bloodthirsty wild animal. Bombs are its only vocabulary." Distinguishing between "the American administration" and American citizens, he added the following qualification: "Many Americans, we know, are horrified by the posture of their government but seem to be helpless" (Various Voices 243). 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 (StWC), which reprinted his Turin speech.

Later he called President of the United States George W. Bush a "mass murderer" and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair both "mass-murdering" and a "deluded idiot", and he described them, along with past U.S. officials, as "war criminals". He also 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". Pinter characterized Blair's Great Britain as "pathetic and supine," a "bleating little lamb tagging behind [the United States] on a lead." According to Pinter, Blair was participating in "an act of premeditated mass murder" instigated on behalf of "the American people", who, Pinter notes, increasingly protest "their government's actions" (public reading from War, as qtd. by Chrisafis and Tilden). Pinter published his remarks to the mass peace protest demonstration held on 15 February 2003, in London, on his Website: "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" ("Speech at Hyde Park"). Those remarks anticipated his 2005 Nobel Lecture, "Art, Truth and Politics", in which he observes: "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" (21).

In accepting the Wilfred Owen Award for Poetry, on 18 March 2005, wondering "What would Wilfred Owen make of the invasion of Iraq? A bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the conception of international law?", Pinter concluded: "I believe Wilfred Owen would share our contempt, our revulsion, our nausea and our shame at both the language and the actions of the American and British governments" (Various Voices 247–48).

In March 2006, upon accepting the Europe Theatre Prize, in Turin, Pinter exhorted the mostly-European audience "to resist the power of the United States," stating, "I'd like to see Europe echo the example of Latin America in withstanding the economic and political intimidation of the United States. This is a serious responsibility for Europe and all of its citizens."

Later political activities

Pinter was active in International PEN, serving as a vice-president, along with American playwright Arthur Miller. In 1985, Pinter and Miller travelled 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 honour, 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) "the reality … of electric current on your genitals": Pinter's outspokenness apparently angered their host and led to indications for his desired departure. Guest of honour Miller left the embassy with him. Recounting this episode for a tribute to Miller on his 80th birthday, Pinter concluded: "Being thrown out of the US embassy in Ankara with Arthur Miller—a voluntary exile—was one of the proudest moments in my life" ("Arthur Miller's Socks", Various Voices 56–57). Pinter's experiences in Turkey and his knowledge of the Turkish suppression of the Kurdish language "inspired" his 1988 play Mountain Language.

He was 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 (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.)

Pinter contributed letters to the editor, essays, speeches, and poetry strongly expressing his artistic and political viewpoints, which were frequently published initially in British periodicals, both in print and electronic media, and distributed and re-distributed extensively over the internet and throughout the blogosphere. These were distributed more widely after his winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005; his subsequent publications and related news accounts cite his status as a Nobel Laureate.

In later life he continued to sign petitions on behalf of artistic and political causes that he supported. For example, he 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 Times on 6 July 2006. He also co-signed an open letter about 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 5 February 2007 The Independent reported that, along with historian Eric Hobsbawm, human rights lawyer Geoffrey Bindman, fashion designer Nicole Farhi, film director Mike Leigh, and actors Stephen Fry and Zoë Wanamaker, among others, Harold Pinter launched the organization Independent Jewish Voices in the United Kingdom "to represent British Jews … in response to a perceived pro-Israeli bias in existing Jewish bodies in the UK", and, according to Hobsbawm, "as a counter-balance to the uncritical support for Israeli policies by established bodies such as the Board of Deputies of British Jews" (Hodgson; IJV Declaration).

In March 2007 Charlie Rose had "A Conversation with Harold Pinter" on Charlie Rose, filmed at the Old Vic, in London, and broadcast on television in the United States on PBS. In this interview they discussed highlights of his career and the politics of his life and work. They debated his ongoing opposition to the Iraq War, with Rose challenging some of Pinter's views about the United States. They also discussed some of his other public protests and positions in public controversies, such as that involving the New York Theatre Workshop's cancellation of their production of My Name Is Rachel Corrie, which Pinter viewed as an act of cowardice amounting to self-censorship.

In mid-June 2008, opposing "a police ban on the George Bush Not Welcome Here" demonstration organized by the Stop the War Coalition (StWC), "Pinter commented, 'The ban on the Stop The War Coalition march in protest at the visit of President Bush to this country [England] is a totalitarian act. In what is supposed to be a free country the Coalition has every right to express its views peacefully and openly. This ban is outrageous and makes the term "democracy" laughable' ".

Pinter's retrospective political perspective on his earlier work

In 1985, Pinter began to describe his earlier plays retrospectively from the perspective of the politics of power and the dynamics of oppression. He expressed such a perspective on his work, for example, when he participated in "Meet the Author" with Ramona Koval, at the Edinburgh Book Festival, in Edinburgh, Scotland, on the evening of 25 August 2006. It was his first public appearance in Britain since he had won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature and his near-death experience in hospital in the first week of December 2005, which had prevented him from traveling to Stockholm and giving his Nobel Lecture in person. Pinter described how he felt while almost dying (as if he were "drowning"). After reading an interrogation scene from The Birthday Party, he provided a rare "explanation" of his work, according to McDowell. 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".

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.

In [March 2006], when he was presented with the European [sic] 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, [at the Edinburgh Book Festival that August], 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."

Honours

Main article: Honours and awards to Harold Pinter

An Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and an Honorary Fellow of the Modern Language Association of America (1970), Pinter was appointed CBE in 1966 and became a Companion of Honour in 2002 (having previously declined a knighthood in 1996). In 1995 and 1996 he accepted the David Cohen Prize, in recognition of a lifetime's literary achievement, and the Laurence Olivier Special Award for a lifetime's achievement in the theatre, respectively. In 1997 he became a BAFTA Fellow. He received the World Leaders Award for "Creative Genius", as the subject of a week-long "Homage" in Toronto, in October 2001. A few years later, in 2004, he received the 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' " (Wilfred Owen Association Newsletter). In March 2006 he was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize, in recognition of lifetime achievements pertaining to drama and theatre ("Letter of Motivation"). In conjunction with that award, from 10 March to 14 March 2006, Michael Billington coordinated an international conference on "Pinter: Passion, Poetry, Politics", including scholars and critics from Europe and the Americas (Harold Pinter 427–28).

Nobel Prize in Literature

On 13 October 2005 the Swedish Academy announced that it had decided to award the Nobel Prize in Literature for that year to "Harold Pinter … Who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms" (press release).

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" (Billington, " 'They said' ").

Nobel Week, including the Nobel Prize Awards Ceremony in Stockholm and related events throughout Scandinavia, began in the first few days of December 2005. Due to medical concerns about his health, Pinter and his family could not attend the Awards Ceremony and those events. After the Academy notified him of his award, although 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, he had still planned to travel to Stockholm, to present his lecture in person a few days earlier (Honigsbaum). In November, however, he was hospitalised for an infection that nearly killed him, and his doctor barred such travel (Billington, Harold Pinter 423–24).

Art, Truth and Politics: The Nobel Lecture

Main article: Art, Truth and Politics

Though still hospitalised, Pinter went to a Channel 4 studio to videotape his Nobel Lecture: "Art, Truth and Politics", which was projected on three large screens at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm on the evening of 7 December 2005 (Lyall, "Playwright Takes a Prize and a Jab at U.S." and "Still Pinteresque").

Simultaneously transmitted on Channel 4 in the UK that evening, but "totally ignored by the BBC" (Billington, Harold Pinter 424), the 46-minute television broadcast was introduced by friend and fellow playwright David Hare. Subsequently, the full text and streaming video formats were posted for the public on the Nobel Prize and Swedish Academy official websites. In these formats Pinter's Nobel Lecture has been widely watched, cited, quoted, and distributed by print and online media and the source of much commentary and debate (425–27).

His Nobel Lecture, Art, Truth and Politics provoked extensive public controversy, with some media commentators accusing Pinter of "anti-Americanism" (Allen-Mills). Yet Pinter emphasizes that he criticizes policies and practices of American administrations, not American citizens, many of whom he recognizes as "demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government's actions" (Various Voices 243; Art, Truth and Politics 21).

As a result of his Nobel Prize and his controversial Nobel Lecture, interest in Pinter's life and work surged. They led to new revivals of his plays, to the updating of Billington's biography (Billington, "We Are Catching Up", in Harold Pinter), and to new editions of Pinter's works (The Essential Pinter and The Dwarfs by Grove Press and a box set of The Birthday Party, No Man's Land, Mountain Language, and Celebration by Faber and Faber).

DVD and VHS video recordings of Pinter's Nobel Lecture (without Hare's introduction) are produced and distributed by Illuminations.

Légion d'honneur

On 18 January 2007 the French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, himself a published poet, presented Pinter with France's highest civil honour, the Légion d'honneur, at a ceremony at the French embassy in London, shortly after holding talks with Tony Blair. Prime Minister de Villepin "praised Mr Pinter's poem American Football (1991)," saying: " 'With its violence and its cruelty, it is for me one of the most accurate images of war, one of the most telling metaphors of the temptation of imperialism and violence.' " "In return," Pinter "praised France for its opposition to the war in Iraq." M. de Villepin concluded: "The poet stands still and observes what doesn't deserve other men's attention. Poetry teaches us how to live and you, Harold Pinter, teach us how to live." He said that Pinter received the award particularly "because in seeking to capture all the facets of the human spirit, [Pinter's] works respond to the aspirations of the French public, and its taste for an understanding of man and of what is truly universal." Lawrence Pollard observed that "the award for the great playwright underlines how much Mr Pinter is admired in countries like France as a model of the uncompromising radical intellectual."

Pinter and academia

Main article: Harold Pinter and academia

Some scholars and critics challenge the validity of Pinter's critiques of what he terms "the modes of thinking of those in power" (Merritt, Pinter in Play 171–89; 180) or dissent from his retrospective viewpoints on his own work (Begley; Karwowski; and Quigley). In his personal political history,

Pinter's own "political act" of conscientious objection resulted from being "terribly disturbed as a young man by the Cold War. And McCarthyism.... A profound hypocrisy. 'They' the monsters, 'we' the good. In 1948 the Russian suppression of Eastern Europe was an obvious and brutal fact, but I felt very strongly then and feel as strongly now [1985] that we have an obligation to subject our own actions and attitudes to an equivalent critical and moral scrutiny." (Merritt, Pinter in Play 178)

Scholars agree that Pinter's dramatic rendering of power relations reflects such a "critical and moral scrutiny" astutely.

Pinter's aversion to any censorship by "the authorities" is epitomised in Petey's line at the end of The Birthday Party. As the broken-down and reconstituted Stanley is being carted off by the figures of authority Goldberg and McCann, Petey calls out after him, "Stan, don't let them tell you what to do!" "I've lived that line all my damn life. Never more than now," he told Gussow in 1988. Pinter's ongoing opposition to "the modes of thinking of those in power"—the "brick wall" of the "minds" perpetuating the "status quo" (180)—infuses the "vast political pessimism" that some academic critics may perceive in his artistic work (Grimes 220), its "drowning landscape" of harsh contemporary realities, with some residual "hope for restoring the dignity of man" (Pinter, Art, Truth and Politics 9, 24).

Pinter's longtime friends the directors and actors David Jones and Henry Woolf would remind analytically-inclined scholars and dramatic critics that Pinter is a "great comic writer" (Coppa); yet, as Pinter himself said of The Caretaker, his work is only "funny, up to a point." "After that point," his dramatic conflicts present serious implications for his characters and his audiences, leading to sustained inquiry about his work and multiple "critical strategies" for dealing with their responses to it (Merritt, Pinter in Play).

On 9 October 2008, the Central School of Speech and Drama announced that Pinter had agreed to become its president (CSSD, "Central Announces New President") and to receive an honorary fellowship in the School's graduation ceremony on 10 December 2008; on his appointment Pinter commented: "I was a student at Central in 1950–51. I enjoyed my time there very much and I am delighted to become president of a remarkable institution" (Smith, "Pinter Replaces"). But Pinter had to receive that honorary degree, his 19th, in absentia, due to ill health ("Degree Honour"; "2008 Central School Graduation Ceremony"). His presidency of the School was very brief, as he died just two weeks after the graduation ceremony, on 24 December 2008.

Archive

Main article: The Harold Pinter Archive in the British Library

Occasional unpublished manuscripts relating to Harold Pinter and his works and letters to and from him are also held in various other collections in the Modern Literary Manuscripts division of the British Library, where the catalogued Harold Pinter Archive is to reopen on 2 February 2009 (O'Brien, "When Do We Get to See the Stuff?!", Harold Pinter Archive Blog), and in other libraries such as the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, at the University of Texas at Austin; The Lilly Library, at Indiana University at Bloomington; the Mandeville Special Collections Library, Geisel Library, at the University of California, San Diego; at the British Film Institute, in London, England; in the Margaret Herrick Library, Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study, at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in Beverly Hills, California; and in other public and private collections.

After Pinter's death, the British Library updated its official Harold Pinter Archive Blog, posting a memorial notice on 29 December 2008, stating that "Harold was a formidable and generous champion of the Library and its work, and the British Library was immensely proud to have added the Pinter archive to our Manuscript Collections in 2007," and promising that "more detailed tributes" would be appearing there soon.

See also

• Being Harold Pinter (Belarus Free Theatre)
• Jewish left

Works cited

Main article: Bibliography for Harold Pinter

Bio-bibliography

• The Swedish Academy. Bio-bibliography: Harold Pinter, Nobel Prize in Literature 2005". NobelPrize.org. The Swedish Academy and The Nobel Foundation, 2005. Web. 5 Jan. 2009. (Contains both "Biobibliographical Notes" and ""Bibliography", with the latter hyperlinked separately in site menu.)

Obituaries and related articles

• Adams, Stephen. "Harold Pinter Directs His Own Funeral". Daily Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 31 Dec. 2008. Web. 6 Jan. 2009. ("His plays were masterpieces of artistic control. And even at his own funeral Harold Pinter made sure he exerted a director's influence.")
• Billington, Michael. "Goodnight, Sweet Prince: Shakespearean Farewell to Pinter". Guardian.co.uk. Guardian Media Group, 1 Jan. 2009. Web. 1 Jan. 2009.
• –––. "Harold Pinter". Guardian.co.uk. Guardian Media Group, 25 Dec. 2008. Web. 25 Dec. 2008.
• British Library (BL). "Harold Pinter (1930–2008)". Harold Pinter Archive Blog: British Library Curators on Cataloguing the Pinter Archive. British Library, 29 Dec. 2008. Web. 2 Jan. 2009.
• Daily Mail Reporter. "Breaking News: Nobel Prize-winning Playwright Harold Pinter Dies Aged 78". Daily Mail. Associated Newspapers Ltd, 25 Dec. 2008. Web. 25 Dec. 2008.
• Dodds, Paisley (Associated Press). "Nobel-winning Playwright Harold Pinter Dies at 78". Associated Press. Rpt. in Google Hosted News. Google, 25 Dec. 2008. Web. 26 Dec. 2008.
• Eden, Richard. Harold Pinter Faces Opposition to Memorial in Poet's Corner". Daily Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 3 Jan. 2009. Web. 3 Jan. 2009.
• "Friends Bid Pinter Farewell". BBC News. BBC, 1 Jan. 2009. Web. 1 Jan. 2009.
• Gussow, Mel, and Ben Brantley. "Harold Pinter, Playwright of the Pause, Dies at 78". New York Times. New York Times, 25 Dec. 2008, Theater. Web. 26 Dec. 2008. (Web version of article listed below.)
• –––. "Harold Pinter, Whose Silences Redefined Drama, Dies at 78". New York Times 26 Dec. 2008, national ed., sec. A: 1, A22–23. Print. [Cites "Online: A Pinter Appraisal: An audio evaluation by Ben Brantley, reviews of Mr. Pinter's plays and more". Print version of article listed above.]
• "Harold Pinter Tribute". Granta. Granta, 25 Dec. 2008. Web. 2 Jan. 2009.
• "Obituary: Harold Pinter". BBC News. BBC, 25 Dec. 2008. Web. 25 Dec. 2008.
• Smith, Alastair. "Pinter to be Honoured Before Final Performance of No Man's Land". The Stage, News. The Stage Newspaper Group Ltd, 2 Jan. 2009. Web. 4 Jan. 2009.
• "Pinter Ends It All with a Double Plot". Mail Online. Associated Newspapers Ltd, 1 Jan. 2009. Web. 4 Jan. 2009.
• Taylor-Batty, Mark, comp. "In Memoriam: Harold Pinter". Harold Pinter Society Webpages. The Harold Pinter Society, 1 Jan. 2009. Web. 1 Jan. 2009. ("Harold Pinter - playwright, poet, actor, director, political activist - died on 24 December 2008, aged 78 ... Here are a few of the obituaries and commentaries released by the international press and online theatre community. [Contains "Key links" and a hyperlinked "Full list" periodically being updated.])
• "Times Obituary: Harold Pinter". Times. News Corporation, 25 Dec. 2008. Web. 25 Dec. 2008.
• Ulaby, Neda. "Remembrances: Remembering Influential Playwright Harold Pinter". Day to Day. National Public Radio, 25 Dec. 2008. Web. 25 Dec. 2008. (Includes audio clip.)
• Wainwright, Hilary. "In Words and Silences". Red Pepper. Red Pepper magazine, Dec. 2008. Web. 3 Jan. 2009. ("Hilary Wainwright reflects on Harold Pinter and Red Pepper.")
• "West End Pays Tribute to Pinter". BBC News. BBC, 27 Dec. 2008. Web. 1 Jan. 2009. (Includes video clip.)

External links

• HaroldPinter.org: The Official Website for the International Playwright Harold Pinter.
• "Harold Pinter" at The Artists Network of Refuse & Resist! 12 Dec. 2005. (17 pages.) (A selection of writings by and commentary about Pinter; rpt. Pinter's 2005 Nobel Lecture: "Art, Truth & Politics".)
• "Harold Pinter" at Books and Writing with Ramona Koval. Broadcast on Radio National on 15 September 2002. (Interview conducted at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 25 August 2002.)
• Harold Pinter at the BFI's Screenonline. (Brief biography, critical account, and selected bibliography, compiled by Roger Phillip Mellor, in the Encyclopedia of British Film. Includes hyperlinked filmography ["Film and TV Credits"], with featured works.)
• "Harold Pinter" at Faber and Faber (Pinter's publisher in the UK). (Includes hyperlinked list of Pinter's works published by Faber and Faber.)
• "Harold Pinter" at Grove Press, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. (Pinter's U.S. publisher). (Includes hyperlinked list of Pinter's works published by Grove Press.)
• Harold Pinter at IMDb.
• "Harold Pinter: The Best of the Guardian's Coverage, including Tributes, Reviews and Articles from the Archive" in "Culture" at Guardian.co.uk. (Hyperlinked content; last updated 1 Jan. 2009.)
• "Harold Pinter" in Books and Writers. Biography and critical account. Authors' Calendar. (Featured Nobel Prize in Literature winner for 2005.)
• "Harold Pinter" in Contemporary Writers. (Biography and critical account by Michael Billington for British Council: Arts.)
• "Harold Pinter" in the Literary Encyclopedia. (Biography and critical account, by Andrew Wyllie, University of the West of England.)
• Harold Pinter in News at Google. (Includes obituaries from around the world.)
• "Harold Pinter" in "Times Topics" of The New York Times. (Index of hyperlinked collected news articles, reviews, commentaries, and photographs published in the newspaper; featured links to media clips and additional external resources.)
• "Harold Pinter" on The Mark Shenton Show, TheatreVoice, recorded on 21 Feb. 2007. (Audio player clip.) ["Focuses on Harold Pinter, with critics Michael Billington and Alastair Macaulay reviewing Pinter's People (Haymarket) and The Dumb Waiter (Trafalgar). Director and actor Harry Burton talks about his experiences with Pinter, and host Mark Shenton discusses upcoming Pinter productions".]
• Harold Pinter Archive Blog: British Library Curators on Cataloguing the Pinter Archive. Official blog. Developed by BL Cataloguer Kate O'Brien, primary contributor. (See "Recent Acquisitions" below.)
• "Harold Pinter – Interview". "(MP3, 47 mins, 19MB)". "Podcasts 2008: Pinter, the Golden Generation, Waugh, English Folksong and More". British Library Online Gallery: What's On. Downloadable MP3 podcast. ("Harold Pinter shares his memories of postwar British theatre with actor and director Harry Burton." Introduced by Jamie Andrews [Head, Modern Literary Manuscripts, British Library] and recorded at the Golden Generation conference at the British Library on 8–9 Sept. 2008.)
• Harold Pinter Society – An Allied Organization of the Modern Language Association (MLA) and an Associated Organization of the Midwest Modern Language Association (M/MLA), The Harold Pinter Society is "dedicated to studying, celebrating, and appraising the works of this prolific and frequently enigmatic writer." (Periodically updated; last updated on 1 Jan. 2009.)
• "Nobel Lecture: Art, Truth & Politics", by Harold Pinter, at nobelprize.org – Official Website of the Nobel Prize. (Hyperlinked video and "The Lecture in Text Format" in the original English and in French, German, and Swedish translations.)
• Pinter at the BBC (BBC Four), 26 Oct. 2002 – 9 Nov. 2002; posted 7 Feb. 2003. [Includes a "Pinter Timeline", a "Q&A" with Pinter's official biographer Michael Billington, and hyperlinked RealMedia video clips.]
• "Pinter on War". Red Pepper Feb. 2004. (Archived version.) [Texts of poems "Weather Forecast", "Democracy", "The Bombs", and "God Bless America".]
• "Recent Acquisitions: The Pinter Archive" in the British Library. ["Collections; Manuscripts" hyperlinked announcement page, with links to official BL press release of 11 Dec. 2007 and the National Heritage Memorial Fund.] (See "Harold Pinter Archive Blog" above.)
• "Reputations: Harold Pinter" on TheatreVoice. Clip of program recorded on 14 Oct. 2005. (Critical assessment by Michael Billington, Dan Rebellato, Charles Spencer and Ian Smith"; hosted by Aleks Sierz.)

Bibliography for Harold Pinter

Main article: Harold Pinter

Bibliography for Harold Pinter is a list of selected published primary works, productions, secondary sources, and other resources related to English playwright Harold Pinter (1930–2008), the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature, who was also a screenwriter, actor, director, poet, author, and political activist. It lists works by and works about him, and it serves as the Bibliography ("Works cited") for the main article on Harold Pinter and for articles relating to him and his works.

Bibliographical resources

• Baker, William, and John C. Ross, comp. Harold Pinter: A Bibliographical History. London: The British Library and New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll P, 2005. ISBN 1584561564 (10). ISBN 9781584561569 (13). Print. ("Oak Knoll Press Bestsellers", Template:PDFlink. Oak Knoll Press, 2007. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.)
• "Biobibliographical Notes" and "Bibliography" for "Harold Pinter, Nobel Prize in Literature 2005". In "Bio-bibliography". By The Swedish Academy. The Nobel Prize in Literature 2005. nobelprize.org. The Swedish Academy and The Nobel Foundation, Oct. 2005. Web. 6 Jan. 2009. (English HTML version; additional PDF versions accessible in English, French, German, and Swedish via hyperlinks.)
• "Links: Libraries and Academia" and "Publications": "Works By" and "Works About" Pinter. haroldpinter.org. Harold Pinter, 2000–[2008]. Web. 3 Jan. 2009.
• Merritt, Susan Hollis, comp. "Harold Pinter Bibliography" Webpage pertaining to the "Harold Pinter Bibliography" published in The Pinter Review: Collected Essays. Tampa: U of Tampa P, 1987– . SusanHollisMerritt.org. Susan Hollis Merritt, 1987-2009. Web. 3 Jan. 2009.
• The Pinter Review. Tampa: U of Tampa P, 1987– ). Ed. Francis Gillen and Steven H. Gale. HaroldPinter.org. Harold Pinter, 2000–[2008]. Web. 3 Jan. 2009. (Table of contents of past issues, retyped on index Webpage; occasional typographical variations.)

The Harold Pinter Archive in the British Library

Main article: The Harold Pinter Archive in the British Library

• British Library (BL). "LOAN NO. 110 A/1-74: HAROLD PINTER ARCHIVE". British Library Manuscripts (Loan) Catalogue. The British Library, n.d. Web. 3 Jan. 2009. (Periodically updated.) [Acquisition of over 150 boxes has been catalogued but this pre-acquisition online list of "Loan No. 110 A" has not yet been converted to the new catalogue content online; although its title lists "1-74" (boxes), it covers 80 boxes and does not yet include the catalogue for the entire 150 boxes.]
• –––. "Pinter Archive Saved for the Nation: British Library Acquires Extensive Collection of UK's Greatest Living Playwright". The British Library: The World's Knowledge. British Library, 11 Dec. 2007. Web. 11 Dec. 2007. (British Library press release.)
• Brown, Mark. "British Library's ₤1.1m Saves Pinter's Papers for Nation". Guardian.co.uk. Guardian Media Group, 12 Dec. 2007. Web. 11 Dec. 2007.
• Gale, Steven H., and Christopher Hudgins. "The Harold Pinter Archives II: A Description of the Filmscript Materials in the Archive in the British Library". The Pinter Review: Annual Essays 1995 and 1996. Ed. Francis Gillen and Steven H. Gale. Tampa: U of Tampa P, 1997. 101-42. Print. (Follows up article by Merritt listed below; does not include an updated version of Merritt's "Appendix"; focuses on manuscript materials relating to Pinter's screenplays.)
• Howard, Jennifer. "British Library Acquires Pinter Papers". Chronicle of Higher Education, News Blog. The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc., 12 Dec. 2007. Web. 16 Dec. 2007.
• Merritt, Susan Hollis. "The Harold Pinter Archive in the British Library". The Pinter Review: Annual Essays 1994. Ed. Francis Gillen and Steven H. Gale. Tampa: U of Tampa P, 1994. 14-53. Print. (The first article describing in detail the contents of this archive; includes "APPENDIX: LIST OF BOXES PRESENTLY IN THE ARCHIVE: Loan 110/1-[64]: Harold Pinter Archive", which provides, with emendations and corrections, the original BL "finding list" through Box 64; in 1994 the "finding list" covered only through Box 61; adds Boxes 62, 63, & 64, all pertaining to Pinter's screenplay adapting The Handmaid's Tale (a novel by Margaret Atwood) for the 1990 film The Handmaid's Tale. See British Library, "LOAN NO. 110 A/1-74: HAROLD PINTER ARCHIVE" and the follow-up article by Gale and Hudgins, both listed above.)
• O'Brien, Kate (BL Cataloguer). "When Do We Get to See the Stuff?!". Harold Pinter Archive Blog: British Library Curators on Cataloguing the Pinter Archive. British Library, 29 Sept. 2008. Web. 3 Jan. 2009.

Works

Main article: Works of Harold Pinter

• Art, Truth and Politics: The Nobel Lecture. Presented on video in Stockholm, Sweden. 7 Dec. 2005. Nobel Foundation and Swedish Academy. Published as "The Nobel Lecture: Art, Truth & Politics". NobelPrize.org. Nobel Foundation, 8 Dec. 2005. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. (RealPlayer streaming audio and video as well as text available). London: Faber and Faber, 2006. ISBN 0571233961 (10). ISBN 9780571233960 (13). Rpt. also in The Essential Pinter. New York: Grove P, 2006. (Listed below.) Rpt. in Not One More Death. London: Stop the War Coalition, 2006. Web. Rpt. in PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association 121 (2006): 811–18.
• "Campaigning Against Torture: Arthur Miller's Socks" (1985). ("Written as a tribute to Arthur Miller, on the occasion of his 80th birthday".) HaroldPinter.org. Harold Pinter, 3 July 2006. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. Rpt. in Various Voices 56-57.
• Death etc. New York: Grove P, 2005. ISBN 0802142257 (10). ISBN 9780802142252 (13). Print.
• The Dwarfs. New York: Grove P, 2006. ISBN 0-8021-3266-9. ISBN 9780802132666 (13). Print.
• The Essential Pinter: Selections from the Work of Harold Pinter. New York: Grove P, 2006. ISBN 0802142699 (10). ISBN 9780802142696 (13). Print. [Inc. "Art, Truth and Politics", Harold Pinter's Nobel Lecture.]
• Four Plays: The Birthday Party; No Man's Land; Mountain Language; Celebration. London: Faber and Faber, 2005. ISBN 0571232272 (10). ISBN 9780571232277 (13). Print. (A "celebratory collection" of hardcover reprinted editions in a box set published in 2005 "to mark [Pinter's] Nobel Prize for Literature 2005".)
• Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics 1948-2005. Rev. ed. 1998. London: Faber and Faber, 2005. ISBN 0571230091 (10). ISBN 9780571230099 (13). Print.
• "Voices: Text by Harold Pinter and Music by James Clarke". Through the Night. BBC Radio 3, Speech and Drama, 10 Oct. 2005, 9:30-10:15 p.m. (LT). Web. 10 Oct. 2005 [live]. [Repeated on 30 Dec. 2006.] (RealPlayer audio no longer accessible.) "BBC Press Office: Programme Information Network Radio Week 1". BBC Press Office. BBC, 10 Oct. 2005. Web. 3 Jan. 2009.
• War. London: Faber and Faber, 2003. ISBN 0571221319 (10). ISBN 9780571221318 (13). Print. (Book revs. by Gardner and Brown.)

Additional essays and speeches

• "The American administration is a bloodthirsty wild animal". Telegraph.co.uk. Telegraph Media Group, 11 Dec. 2002. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. [A version of "Harold Pinter's Speech at Turin University" (see below).]
• "Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Degree Speech April 18th 2000". HaroldPinter.org. Harold Pinter, 2000–[2008]]. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• "Blowing Up the Media: Index on Censorship, May 1992". Print. Rpt. in Various Voices 201–5. Print.
• "Caribbean Cold War". Red Pepper May 1996. Redpepper.org. Red Pepper magazine, May 1996. Web. 3 Oct. 2007. (Rpt. in Guardian 4 Dec. 1996. Also rpt. in Pinter, Various Voices 209–12. Print.)
• "Degree Speech to the University of Florence 10th September 2001". HaroldPinter.org. Harold Pinter, 2002. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. Rpt. as "University of Florence Speech: On the Occasion of the Award of an Honorary Degree, 10 September 2001". Rpt. in Various Voices (Faber rev. ed., 2005) 238–40.
• "Eroding the Language of Freedom: Sanity, March 1989". Rpt. in HaroldPinter.org. Harold Pinter, 2000–[2008]. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. Rpt. in Various Voices 188–89. Print.
• Foreword. Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis. Ed. Philip Hammond and Edward S. Herman. London: Pluto Press, 2000. ISBN 074531631X. Print.
• "The Gulf War and the Continuing Bombing of Iraq". HaroldPinter.org. Harold Pinter, 2000–[2008]. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. (Includes hyperlinked essays and speeches. See ""House of Commons Speech: 15 October 2002" below.)
• "Harold Pinter's Speech at Turin University". Stopwar.org.uk. Stop the War Coalition, 27 Nov. 2002. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. Rpt. as "University of Turin Speech: On the Occasion of the Award of an Honorary Degree 27 November 2002." Rpt. in Various Voices 241–43. Also rpt. in War [7–9; n. pag.]. Print. (Another version was published as "The American administration is a bloodthirsty wild animal" [without internal quotation marks]; see above.)
• "House of Commons Speech – 15 October 2002". HaroldPinter.org. Harold Pinter, 2002. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. Rpt. in Death etc. 71–73. Print.
• "House of Commons Speech - Tuesday 21st January 2003". HaroldPinter.org. Harold Pinter, 2003. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. Rpt. in Various Voices 244. Print.
• "Introduction by Harold Pinter, Nobel Laureate". 7–9 in 'Fortune's Fool': The Man Who Taught Harold Pinter: A Life of Joe Brearley. Ed. G. L. Watkins. Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, Eng., UK: TwigBooks in association with The Clove Club, 2008. ISBN 9780954723682. Print.
• "Iraq Debate: Imperial War Museum, 23 September 2004". HaroldPinter.org. Harold Pinter, 2004. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. Rpt. in Various Voices 24–46. Print.
• "It Never Happened". Z Magazine. Z Communications, Feb. 1997. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. Rpt. in Various Voices 214-17. Print.
• "Oh, Superman: Broadcast for Opinion, Channel 4, 31 May 1990". Rpt. in Various Voices 190–200. Excerpt qtd. in "Politics" section of haroldpinter.org. Harold Pinter, 2007. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• "An Open Letter to the Prime Minister: Guardian 17 February 1998". HaroldPinter.org. Harold Pinter, 2000–[2008]. Web. Oct. 2007. Rpt. in Various Voices 235–37. Print.
• "Speech at Hyde Park (F)ebruary 15th 2003". HaroldPinter.org. Harold Pinter, 2000–[2008]. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• "The US and El Salvador: Observer, 28 March 1993". Rpt. in Various Voices 206–208. Print.
• "The US Elephant Must Be Stopped". Guardian, 5 December 1987". Rpt. in Various Voices 185–87. Print.
• "The War Against Reason". Red Pepper Dec. 2002. Rpt. in ZNet. Z Communications, n.d. Web. 3 Jan. 2009.
• "Why George Bush Is Insane" (2002). Rpt. in ZNet. Z Communications, 30 Mar. 2007. Web. 3 Oct. 2007. (Another published version of the University of Turin Speech (27 Nov. 2002), listed above and rpt. in Various Voices 241-43. Print.)
• "Wilfred Owen Award for Poetry: Acceptance Speech, 18 March 2005". HaroldPinter.org. Harold Pinter, 2005. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. Rpt. in Death etc. 1–2; Various Voices 247–48. Print.

Letters, petitions, and statements

• Template:PDF. Stopwar.org. Stop the War Coalition, 7 Aug. 2007. Web. 5 Oct. 2007.
• "Letter from Pinter, Saramago, Chomsky and Berger" (19 July 2006). Published in "Palestinian Nation Under Threat", The Independent 21 July 2006, and in other newspapers. Rpt. in "Opinion: Scoop Feedback", scoop.co.nz. Scoop, 25 July 2006, 3:22 p.m. Web. 3 Oct. 2007. Rpt. also as "A Letter from Chomsky and Others on the Recent Events in the Middle East (July 19, 2006)", chomsky.info. Noam Chomsky, 27 July 2006. Web. 3 Oct. 2007. (Signed first by John Berger, Noam Chomsky, Harold Pinter, and José Saramago; "later endorsed" by Tariq Ali, et al.) (See "Palestinian Nation Under Threat"; and Chomsky, "Comments on Dershowitz" and "Israel, Lebanon, and Palestine"; all listed below in "Other secondary sources".)
• "Playwrights in Apartheid Protest". The Times 26 June 1963: 12. Print.

Poems

• "Death May Be Ageing" (Apr. 2005). Rpt. in Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics 1948–2005 (2005 ed.) 180. Print. Also rpt. in "Poetry by Harold Pinter" in Another America (listed below).
• "Harold Pinter (b. 1930)". Poetryarchive.org. The Poetry Archive, n.d. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. Biography, critical account, and streaming audio of a special recording of Pinter reading four of his poems: "Cancer Cells", "It is Here", "Later", and "Episode"; recorded 16 Dec. 2002, The Audio Workshop, London; prod. Richard Carrington.
• "Harold Pinter's Poetry". HaroldPinter.org. Harold Pinter, 2000–[2008]]. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. (Includes "Harold Pinter's Most Recent Poetry", periodically updated).
• "Harold Pinter's War", by M. C. Gardner. Another America. Donald Freed, May 2007. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. (Includes texts and related review of War; see "Poetry by Harold Pinter", in Another America, listed below.)
• "Laughter." In "Review: Laughter: The Saturday Poem: By Harold Pinter." The Guardian 25 Nov. 2006, Guardian Review Pages: 23. Print.
• "Literature of the Gaieties". haroldpinter.org. Harold Pinter, 2000–[2008]]. Web. 1 Nov. 2007.
• "Poetry by Harold Pinter". Another America. Donald Freed, May 2007. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. (Published with permission of Harold Pinter.)
• Sections of various printed collections such as Death etc., The Essential Pinter, The Pinter Review, Various Voices, and War. Print.
• "The Special Relationship" (Aug. 2004). Featured link. Home page of haroldpinter.org. Harold Pinter, 2004. Web. 31 Oct. 2007.
• "The 'special relationship' ". The Guardian 9 Sept. 2004, G2: 4. Print.
• "The Watcher". The Guardian 9 Apr. 2007: 3. Print.

Interviews

• Batty, Mark. "Pinter Views: Pinter on Pinter". 79–153, chap. 8 in Batty, About Pinter. Print.
• Bensky, Lawrence M. "The Art of Theatre No. 3: Harold Pinter". Paris Rev. 10.39 [Issue no. 39] (Fall 1966): 12–37. Print. Excerpt from archived contents of journal; hyperlinked Template:PDFlink. The Paris Review. The Paris Review Foundation, Inc., 2004. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. (A frequently-cited source of Pinter's early views.)
• Billington, Michael. " 'I've written 29 damn plays. Isn't that enough?' " Guardian.co.uk. Guardian Media Group, 17 Mar. 2006. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. (Transcript.)
• –––, comp. " 'They said you've a call from the Nobel committee. I said, why?': Harold Pinter in His Own Words". Guardian.co.uk. Guardian Media Group, 14 Oct. 2005. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• Johnson, B. S. "Evacuees" (1968). The Pinter Review: Annual Essays 1994. Ed. Francis Gillen and Steven H. Gale. Tampa: U of Tampa P, 1994. 8-13. Print.
• Koval, Ramona. "Harold Pinter". Books and Writing with Ramona Koval. ABC Radio National. Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 15 Sept. 2002. Conducted at Edinburgh Book Festival, Edinburgh, Scotland, Aug. 2002. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. Radio. Transcript.
• –––. "Harold Pinter, Nobel Prize-Winning Playwright and Poet, at Edinburgh International Book Festival (transcript available)". Edinburgh, Scotland, 25 Aug. 2006. The Book Show. ABC Radio National. Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 25 Sept. 2006. Web. 26 Sept. 2006. Radio. Transcript. (Downloadable MP3 audio file and printable transcript; audio file inc. Pinter's dramatic reading of a scene from his play The Birthday Party.)
• Lawson, Mark. "Pinter 'to give up writing plays' ". Inc. "Pinter on Front Row". Broadcast on BBC Radio 4. BBC News, 28 Feb. 2005 (last updated). Web. 11 Nov. 2006 & 2 Oct. 2007. Radio. RealPlayer audio.
• Lyall, Sarah. "Still Pinteresque". New York Times 7 Oct. 2007, sec. 2 ("Arts & Leisure"): 1, 16; illus. Print. New York Times, Movies. New York Times, 7 Oct. 2007. Web. 6 Jan. 2009. (Feature article which previews Sleuth; includes film trailer.)
• Riddell, Mary. "The New Statesman Interview: Harold Pinter". New Statesman. New Statesman, 8 Nov. 1999. Web. 6 Jan. 2009. (Includes audio clip.)
• Rose, Charlie. "A Conversation with Harold Pinter". Charlie Rose. PBS. WNET, New York, 19 July 2001. Television. (First broadcast on 19 July 2001 from 11:00 p.m. EST to 12:00 a.m. EST; also broadcast on PBS affiliate channels at various scheduled times. 58 mins.) Video clip (57 mins., 47 secs.). Google Video. Google, n.d. Web. 2 Oct. 2007 & 3 Jan. 2009.
• –––. "A Conversation with Harold Pinter". Charlie Rose. PBS. WNET, New York, 1 Mar. 2007. Web. 1 Mar. 2007. Television. (First broadcast on 1 Mar. 2007 from 11:00 p.m. ET to 12:00 a.m. ET; also broadcast on PBS affiliate channels at various scheduled times. PBS. WXXI-TV, Rochester, New York, 1 Mar. 2007. Broadcast from 11:00 p.m. ET to 12:00 a.m. ET. 52 mins., 21 secs. Full-length streaming video accessible directly from the show's Website.)
• Wark, Kirsty. "Harold Pinter on Newsnight Review". BBC News. BBC, 23 June 2006. Web. 6 Jan. 2009. ("Kirsty Wark Introduces Her Interview with Harold Pinter, Which Aired on Newsnight Review, Friday 23 June, at 11pm on BBC TWO." [See below.])
• –––. "Interviews: Nobel Prize Winning Playwright Harold Pinter Talks to Kirsty Wark". Newsnight Review. BBC Two, London, 23 June 2006. Television. BBC News. BBC, 25 June 2006. Web. 6 Jan. 2009. RealPlayer streaming video. [See above.]

Stage productions

• Krapp's Last Tape. Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court Theatre, London. 12 Oct.–24 Oct. 2006. Royal Court Theatre, Oct. 2006. Web. 6 Jan. 2009.
• "The Birthday Party: 8–24 May 2008". Lyric.co.uk. Lyric Hammersmith Official Website. 26 Sept. 2008.
• "The Birthday Party – Premiere". ("First presented by Michael Codron and David Hall at the Arts Theatre, Cambridge 28 April 1958, and subsequently at the Lyric Opera House, Hammersmith.") haroldpinter.org 3 Oct. 2007. (Production details and excerpts from related reviews by Harold Hobson (see below) and others.)
• "The Caretaker – Premiere". Dir. Donald McWhinnie, Arts Theatre Club, Arts Theatre, London, 27 Apr. 1960; transferred to the Duchess Theatre, London, 30 May 1960. haroldpinter.org. 4 Oct. 2007. (Production details and excerpts from related reviews.)
• The Dumb Waiter (1957). Dir. Harry Burton. Trafalgar Studios, London. Opened 2 February 2007. 2 Oct. 2007.
• "Dumb Waiter Limited Run". 50th anniversary production. Press release. Sonia Friedman Productions, 3 Jan. 2007. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• "The Hothouse". Dir. Ian Rickson. Lyttelton Theatre, Royal National Theatre, London. 11 July – 27 Oct. 2007. National Theatre Online, n.d. Web. 6 Jan. 2009. (Features NT Video.)
• One For The Road - Premiere" (1984). (A double bill with Victoria Station.) HaroldPinter.org. Harold Pinter, 2000–[2008]. Web. 6 Jan. 2009. (Production details and excerpts from related reviews.)
• "Victoria Station - Lyric Studio 1984". (A double bill with One for the Road.) HaroldPinter.org. Harold Pinter, 2000–[2008]. Web. 6 Jan. 2009. (Production details and excerpts from related reviews.)

Other secondary sources

• Agencies. "'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". "2005: Harold Pinter". Guardian.co.uk, Books: Special Reports: The Nobel Prize for Literature". Guardian Media Group, 4 Oct. 2007. Web. 4 Oct. 2007.
• Allen-Mills, Tony. "This Pinter Guy Could Turn into a Pain: Belatedly, Americans Are Wising Up to a Nobel Menace, says Tony Allen-Mills". Times Online. News International, 6 Nov. 2005. Web. 3 Oct. 2007.
• Anderson, Porter. "Harold Pinter: Theater's Angry Old Man: At the Prize of Europe, the Playwright Is All Politics". CNN.com. CNN, 17 Mar. 2006. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• Baker, William. Harold Pinter. Writers' Lives Series. London and New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2008. ISBN 0826499708 (10) (hardback). ISBN 9780826499707 (13) (hardback). ISBN 0826499716 (10) (paperback). ISBN 9780826499714 (13) (paperback). Print.
• Batiukov, Michael. "Belarus 'Free Theatre' Is Under Attack by Militia in Minsk, Belarus". American Chronicle. Ultio, LLC, 22 Aug. 2007. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• Batty, Mark. About Pinter: The Playwright and the Work. London: Faber and Faber, 2005. ISBN 0571220053 (10). ISBN 9780571220052 (13). Print. (Inc. chap. 9, "Views on Pinter: Friends and Collaborators" on 155–221.)
• Begley, Varun. Harold Pinter and the Twilight of Modernism. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2005. ISBN 0802038875 (10). ISBN 9780802038876 (13). Print.
• Billington, Michael. Harold Pinter. London: Faber and Faber, 2007. ISBN 9780571234769 (13). Updated 2nd ed. of The Life and Work of Harold Pinter. 1996. London: Faber and Faber, 1997. ISBN 0571171036 (10). Print. (The official authorized biography.)
• –––. "The Importance of Being Pinter: A New Production by the Belarus Free Theatre Reinforces the Global Resonance of the British Playwright's Political Works". Guardian.co.uk, Arts blog – Theatre. Guardian Media Group, 16 Apr. 2007. Web. 16 April 2007.
• –––. "Krapp's Last Tape: 4 Stars Royal Court, London". Guardian.co.uk, Theatre. Guardian Media Group, 16 Oct. 2006. Web. 6 Jan. 2009.
• –––. "Passionate Pinter's Devastating Assault On US Foreign Policy: Shades of Beckett As Ailing Playwright Delivers Powerful Nobel Lecture". Guardian.co.uk. Guardian Media Group, 8 Dec. 2005, Books. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• –––. "We Are Catching Up With This Man's Creative Talent At Last: The Current Rash of Pinter Revivals Is about Far More Than Guilt or Respect. Both Artistically and Politically, He Was Ahead of the Pack.") Guardian.co.uk, Comment. Guardian Media Group, 1 Mar. 2007. Web. 11 Oct. 2007.
• Bond, Paul. "Harold Pinter's Artistic Achievement". World Socialist Web Site. World Socialist Web Site, 29 Dec. 2005. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• Brantley, Ben. "Harold Pinter". New York Times, Times Topics . New York Times, n.d. (updated periodically). Web. 6 Jan. 2009. (Introd. to hyperlinked Harold Pinter News––New York Times; includes menu of recommended external links.)
• –––. "A Master of Menace" (audio file). (See "Multimedia resources" listed below.)
• –––. "Theater Review: The Homecoming (Cort Theater): You Can Go Home Again, But You'll Pay the Consequences". New York Times 17 Dec. 2007, The Arts: E1. Print. New York Times, 17 Dec. 2007. Web. 17 Dec. 2007.
• Brown, Mark. "What Is It (War) Good for?" Socialist Review. Socialist Review, Sept. 2003. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. [Book rev. of War, by Harold Pinter.]
• "Bush and Blair Slated by Pinter". BBC News. BBC, 7 Dec. 2005. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. (Features related links.)
• The Cambridge Companion to Harold Pinter. Ed. Peter Raby. Cambridge Companions to Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. ISBN 052165842X (10). ISBN 9780521658423 (13). Print. Cambridge Collections Online. Cambridge University Press, n.d. Web. 11 October 2007. (Hyperlinked table of contents.)
• Central School of Speech and Drama (CSSD). "Central Announces New President". Press release. Central School of Speech and Drama. University of London, 9 Oct. 2008. Web. 15 Oct. 2008.
• –––. "Central's 2008 Graduation Ceremony: Honorary Fellowships for Harold Pinter, Jo Brand and Penny Francis". Press release. Central School of Speech and Drama. University of London, 12 Dec. 2008. Web. 1 Jan. 2009.
• Chomsky, Noam. "Comments on Dershowitz". 'ZNet. Z Communications, 6 Sept. 2006. Web. 7 Sept. 2006. (Followed by text by Alan Dershowitz.)
• –––. "Israel, Lebanon, and Palestine: Tariq Ali, John Berger, Noam Chomsky, Eduardo Galeano, Naomi Klein, Harold Pinter, Arundhati Roy, José Saramago & Howard Zinn" (Updated signatures). chomsky.info . Noam Chomsky, 19 July 2006. Web, 4 Oct. 2007.
• Chrisafis, Angelique, and Imogen Tilden. "Pinter Blasts 'Nazi America' and 'deluded idiot' Blair". Guardian.co.uk. Guardian Media Group, 11 June 2003. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• Christie, Janet. "Cautionary Tale about a Boy and Girl". Scotland on Sunday 7 Oct. 2007. Web. 9 Oct. 2007.
• Cohen, Lisa. "J. Barry Lewis on 'Betrayal'", Edge (Ft. Lauderdale, Florida). Edge Publications, Inc., 1 Mar. 2007. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• Cole, Olivia. "Cut the Pauses ...Says Pinter". Times Online. News International, 11 February 2007. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• Coppa, Francesca. "The Sacred Joke: Comedy and Politics in Pinter's Early Plays". 44–56 in The Cambridge Companion to Harold Pinter. Ed. Peter Raby. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. Print. Cambridge Collections Online. Cambridge University Press, n.d. Web. 4 Jan. 2009. (Extract; registered account required for access to full text.)
• "Death of Vivien Merchant Is Ascribed to Alcoholism". New York Times. New York Times, 7 Oct. 1982. Web. 3 Oct. 2007.
• "Degree Honour for Playwright Pinter". Press Association. Rpt. by Google Hosted News. Google, 11 Dec. 2008. Web. 11 Dec. 2008.
• Diamond, Elin. Pinter's Comic Play. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 1985. Print.
• Dougary, Ginny. "Lady Antonia Fraser's Life Less Ordinary: In a Frank Interview, the Famed Writer Talks about Motherhood, Catholicism, Her Parents and Soulmate Harold Pinter". |Times Online. News International, 5 July 2008. Web. 5 July 2008.
• Eden, Richard, and Tim Walker. "Mandrake: A Pinteresque Silence". Sunday Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 27 Aug. 2006. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• Ferguson, Niall. "Do the Sums, Then Compare US and Communist Crimes from the Cold War". Daily Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 11 Dec. 2005. 2 Oct. 2007.
• Filichia, Peter. "McCarter Gives Pinter a Happy 'Birthday Party'". Star-Ledger. McCarter Theatre Ticket Office (Reviews), 18 September 2006. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• Freed, Donald. "The Courage of Harold Pinter". Presentation at the conference Artist and Citizen: 50 Years of Performing Pinter. University of Leeds. 13 April 2007. Another America. Donald Freed, Apr. 2007. Web. 28 May 2007.
• French Embassy in the United Kingdom. "Harold Pinter Awarded Légion d'Honneur". France in the United Kingdom. French Embassy (UK), 17 Jan. 2007. Web. 3 Oct. 2007.
• "French PM Honours Harold Pinter". BBC News. BBC, 18 Jan. 2007. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• Gale, Steven H. Sharp Cut: Harold Pinter's Screenplays and the Artistic Process. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2003. ISBN 0813122449 (10). ISBN 9780813122441 (13). Print.
• Gans, Andrew. "Broadway Homecoming Will Be a Week Later Than Originally Announced". Playbill, News. Playbill, 9 Aug. 2007. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. (Features hyperlink to "Listings/Tickets/Broadway: The Homecoming", Playbill.)
• –––. "Esparza to Return to Broadway in The Homecoming; McKean, Too", Playbill, News. Playbill, 24 July 2007. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• –––. "Ian McShane to Have Broadway Homecoming". Playbill, News. Playbill, 14 Nov. 2006. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• Gardner, M.C. "Harold Pinter's War". Book rev. Another America Journal. Lightning Source, Inc., 2003. Another America. Donald Freed, May 2007. Web. 6 Jan. 2009.
• Gordon, Lois, ed. Pinter at 70: A Casebook. Casebooks on Modern Dramatists. 1990. Rev. and enl. ed. New York: Routledge, 2001. ISBN 0415936306 (10). ISBN 9780415936309 (13). Print.
• Grimes, Charles. Harold Pinter's Politics: A Silence Beyond Echo. Madison & Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson UP; Cranbury, NJ: Associated UP, 2005. ISBN 0838640508. Print.
• Gussow, Mel. Conversations with Pinter. London: Nick Hern Books, 1994. ISBN 1854592017. Rpt. New York: Limelight, 2004. ISBN 0879101792. Print.
• –––. "Critic's Notebook: On the London Stage, a Feast of Revenge, Menace and Guilt". New York Times. New York Times, 31 July 1991. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. (Site registration may be required.)
• Hands Off Cuba!. The Cuba Solidarity Campaign in the UK, n.d. Web. 3 Oct. 2007. (Official Website updated periodically.)
• Hari, Johann. "Johann Hari: Pinter Does Not Deserve the Nobel Prize: The Only Response to His Nobel Rant (and Does Anyone Doubt It Will Be a Rant?) Will Be a Long, Long Pause" (column). Independent, Comment. Independent News & Media, 6 Dec. 2005. Johann Hari, 2 Oct. 2007. Web. 12 Oct. 2007. (Archived in johannhari.com.)
• "Harold Pinter Added to IFOA Lineup". Press release. International Festival of Authors] (IFOA), Toronto, 1 Oct. 2001. Web. 1 Oct. 2001. "Harold Pinter Added to IFOA Lineup". Archived IFOA press release. The Internet Archive: The Wayback Machine. Web. 4 Oct. 2007.
• Harold Pinter at the Internet Broadway Database. Web. 3 Oct. 2007.
• "Harold Pinter Meets Free Theatre in Leeds". Press release. Belarus Free Theatre. Belarus Free Theatre, 2 May 2007. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. (English version has some typographical errors; also accessible in Belarusian [pусский] and in French [français]. Features photographs reposted from Mark Taylor-Batty's University of Leeds Website for the conference Artist and Citizen: 50 Years of Performing Pinter.)
• Hickling, Alfred. "Being Harold Pinter ***** Workshop, University of Leeds". Guardian.co.uk. Guardian Media Group, 16 Apr. 2007. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• Higgins, Charlotte. "Edinburgh Festival: Two-act rant from Sean and Harold". Guardian.co.uk. Guardian Media Group, 26 Aug. 2006. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• Hinchliffe, Arnold P. Harold Pinter. The Griffin Authors Ser. New York: St. Martin's P, 1967. Print.
• Hitchens, Christopher. "Commentary: The Sinister Mediocrity of Harold Pinter". The Wall Street Journal 17 Oct. 2005, A18. Print. Wall Street Journal, 17 Oct. 2005. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. (Electronic ed.; full version restricted to subscribers; free preview.)
• Hobson, Harold. "The Screw Turns Again". Sunday Times 25 May 1958: 11. Print. (Cited in Merritt, Pinter in Play.) Rpt. in The Birthday Party. HaroldPinter.org. Harold Pinter, 2000–[2008]. Web. 3 Oct. 2007. (See also "Stage productions" listed above.)
• Hodgson, Martin. "British Jews Break Away from 'pro-Israeli' Board of Deputies". The Independent. Independent News & Media, 5 Feb. 2007. World Wide Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• Honigsbaum, Mark. "Publisher to Stand In for Pinter at Nobel Ceremony". Guardian.co.uk. Guardian Media Group, 24 Nov. 2005. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• Horwitz, Simi. "James Frain Joins 'The Homecoming'". Backstage.com. Nielsen Business Media, Inc., 2 Oct. 2007. Web. 5 Oct. 2007.
• Howard, Jennifer. "Nobel Prize in Literature Goes to Harold Pinter, British Playwright Widely Studied in Academe". Chronicle of Higher Education. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 13 Oct. 2006. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• Jacobson, Aileen. "Pinter's Pauses: Even the Playwright Thinks They've Led to Over-pausing. But Actors in Two New Productions Find Them Exciting". Newsday, 5 Nov. 1989. Print.
• Jones, David. "Travels with Harold". Front & Center Online ("The Online Version of Roundabout Theatre Company's Subscriber Magazine"). Roundabout Theatre Company, Fall 2003. (3 pages.) Web. 9 Oct. 2007. ("David Jones' Staging of The Caretaker for Roundabout Culminates a 40-Year Career Acting and Directing the Work of Harold Pinter. Here the Director Looks Back.")
• Karwowski, Michael. "Harold Pinter––a Political Playwright?". Contemporary Review 283.1654 (Nov. 2003): 291–96. Rpt. in HighBeam Encyclopedia. Web.
• Lahr, John. "Demolition Man: Harold Pinter and 'The Homecoming'". The New Yorker 24 Dec. 2007, "Onward and Upward with the Arts". Print. The New Yorker Magazine, 16 Dec. 2007. (Advance online version.) Web. 16 Dec. 2007. (6 pages online; 7 pages in printout.)
• "Letter of Motivation for the European Theatre Prize". 10th Edition of the Europe Theatre Prize to Harold Pinter ("X Premio Europa per il teatro a Harold Pinter"). premio-europa.org. 2 Oct. 2007.
• Lyall, Sarah. "Playwright Takes a Prize and a Jab at U.S". New York Times. New York Times, 8 Dec. 2006. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. Correction appended 10 Dec. 2005: "An article on Thursday about the playwright Harold Pinter's criticism of American foreign policy in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for literature described it incompletely. He said that both President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair - and not just Prime Minister Blair - should be tried before the International Criminal Court of Justice for the invasion of Iraq.") (Site registration required.)
• Mbeki, Thabo. "Letter from the President: Hail the Nobel Laureates - Apostles of Human Curiosity!". ANC Today ("Online Voice of the African National Congress") 5.42 (21–27 Oct. 2005). African National Congress, 12 Nov. 2007. Web.
• [McDowell, Leslie.] "Book Festival Reviews: Pinter at 75: The Anger Still Burns: Harold Pinter". The Scotsman 26 Aug. 2006: 5. Print. The Scotsman Publications Limited (Johnston Press Plc), (updated) 27 Aug. 2006. Web. 6 Jan. 2009.
• Merritt, Susan Hollis. "Betrayal in Denver". The Pinter Review: Collected Essays 2003 and 2004. Ed. Francis Gillen and Steven H. Gale. Tampa: U of Tampa P, 2004. 187–201. 2 Oct. 2007. Print.
• –––. "Europe Theatre Prize Celebration -- Turin, Italy". Harold Pinter Society Newsletter, Fall 2006. Web. (Downloadable electronic document sent to members.)
• –––. Pinter in Play: Critical Strategies and the Plays of Harold Pinter. 1990. Durham and London: Duke UP, 1995. ISBN 0822316749 (10). ISBN 9780822316749 (13). Print.
• –––. "Talking about Pinter". (On the Lincoln Center Festival 2001: Harold Pinter Festival Symposia.) The Pinter Review: Collected Essays 2001 and 2002. Ed. Francis Gillen and Steven H. Gale. Tampa: U of Tampa P, 2002. 144–67. Print.
• Moss, Stephen. "The Guardian Profile: Harold Pinter: Under the Volcano". Guardian.co.uk. Guardian Media Group, 4 Sept. 1999. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• "Palestinian Nation Under Threat". The Independent. Independent News & Media, 21 July 2006. World Wide Web. 3 Oct. 2007.
• Parini, Jay. "Theater: Pinter's Plays, Pinter's Politics", Chronicle of Higher Education, Chronicle Rev. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11 Nov. 2005. World Wide Web. 2 Oct. 2007. (3 pages.)
• "People". Time . Time Inc., 11 Aug. 1975. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. Archived in the Time Archive: 1923 to the Present. (Page 1 of 2 pages.)
• Pilger, John. "The Silence of Writers". ZNet. Z Communications, 16 Oct. 2005. Web. 5 July 2006.
• "Pinter Honoured for a Lifetime's Contribution to the Arts". University of Leeds press release. University of Leeds, 13 Apr. 2007. Web.
• "Pinter Wins Nobel Literary Prize". BBC News . BBC, 13 Oct. 2005. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• "Protesters Will Defy Ban on Anti-Bush Demo on Sunday 15 June". Socialist Worker Online (UK). Socialist Worker, 14 June 2008. Web. 12 June 2008.
• Quigley, Austin E. "Pinter, Politics and Postmodernmism (I)". 7–27 in The Cambridge Companion to Harold Pinter. Print.
• Reddy, E.S. "Free Mandela: An Account of the Campaign to Free Nelson Mandela and All Other Political Prisoners in South Africa". July 1988. African National Congress (ANC): Documents: History of Campaigns. African National Congress, n.d. Web. 5 Jan. 2009.
• Riddell, Mary. "Comment: Prophet without Honour: Harold Pinter Can Be Cantankerous and Puerile. But He Is a Worthy Nobel Prizewinner". Guardian.co.uk. Guardian Media Group, 11 Dec. 2005. Web. 6 Jan. 2009.
• Robertson, Campbell. "In Search of Her Inner Kangaroo Suit: Eve Best Storms Broadway and New York". New York Times, 24 Dec. 2007, The Arts: E1, 6. 24 Dec. 2007. Print. New York Times, 24 Dec. 2007. Web. 24 Dec. 2007. (Interview with actress Eve Best [Ruth in The Homecoming (Cort Theatre)].)
• Robinson, David. "Books: Doyle Returns to an Old Favourite in New Work; . . . Harold Pinter". The Scotsman, Living. The Scotsman, 28 Aug. 2006. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• –––. "I'm Written Out, Says Controversial Pinter". The Scotsman 26 Aug. 2006: 6. Print. The Scotsman, 26 Aug. 2006. Web. 26 Aug. 2006.
• Smith, Alastair. "Pinter Replaces Mandelson as Central President". The Stage. The Stage Newspaper Limited, 14 Oct. 2008. Web. 15 Oct. 2008.
• Smith, Martin J. "My Diary of Pinter's Homecoming". Guardian.co.uk, Arts Blog – Theatre. Guardian Media Group, 16 Mar. 2007. Web. 16 Mar. 2007.
• Smith, Neil. "'Political element' to Pinter Prize?" BBC News. BBC, 13 Oct. 2005. ("Last Updated: Thursday, 13 October 2005, 16:33 GMT 17:33 UK.") Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• Smith, Susan Harris. "'Pinteresque' in the Popular Press". The Pinter Review: Collected Essays 2003 and 2004. Ed. Francis Gillen and Steven H. Gale. Tampa: U of Tampa P, 2004. 103–108. Print.
• Sofer, Andrew. "The Cheese-Roll under the Cocktail Cabinet: Pinter's Object Lessons". The Pinter Review: Collected Essays 2003 and 2004. Ed. Francis Gillen and Steven H. Gale. Tampa: U of Tampa P, 2004. 29–38. Print.
• "Special Report: The Nobel Prize for Literature: 2005 Harold Pinter". Guardian.co.uk. Guardian Media Group, 2 Oct. 2007. World Wide Web. 2 Oct. 2007. (Features links relating to Harold Pinter's 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature. [Periodically updated and re-located.])
• The Swedish Academy. "The Nobel Prize in Literature 2005: Harold Pinter". Nobelprize.org. The Swedish Academy and The Nobel Foundation, 13 Oct. 2005. Web. 4 Oct. 2007. (Hyperlinked account. Provides links to the official Nobel Prize announcement, Bio-bibliography, Bibliography, press release, press conference, and audio and video streaming media files of the press conference and related interviews and features. These resources are accessible on the official websites of both the Nobel Prize and the Swedish Academy; they are periodically revised and re-located.)
• Taylor-Batty, Mark. "Fling Open Door and Let Pinter's Pause Be Heard". Times Higher Education Supplement 27 Apr. 2007: 12. Print.
• Thomson, David T. Pinter: The Player's Playwright. London: Macmillan, 1985. New York: Schocken, 1985. ISBN 0805239642. Print.
• Toíbín, Colm. "Pinter Takes On Beckett: As Harold Pinter Prepares to Tackle 'Krapp's Last Tape', Novelist Colm Toíbín Looks Forward to a Meeting of Two Theatrical Giants". Daily Telegraph. News International, 7 Oct. 2006 ("Last updated: 12:01 am BST"). Web. 3 Oct. 2007.
• Traub, James. "The Way We Live Now: Their Highbrow Hatred of Us". New York Times Mag.. New York Times, 30 Oct. 2005. Web. 30 Oct 2005. (Site registration may be required.)
• "Travel Advisory: Toronto Festival Honors 14 Leaders in the Arts". New York Times (Archive). New York Times, 9 Sept. 2001. Web. 4 Oct. 2007. (Site registration may be required.)
• Wardle, Irving. "The Birthday Party". Encore 5 (July–Aug. 1958): 39–40. Rpt. in The Encore Reader: A Chronicle of the New Drama. Ed. Charles Marowitz, Tom Milne, and Owen Hale. London: Methuen, 1965. 76–78. Print. (Reissued as: New Theatre Voices of the Fifties and Sixties. London: Eyre Methuen, 1981.)
• –––. "Comedy of Menace". Encore 5 (Sept.–Oct. 1958): 28–33. Rpt. in The Encore Reader and New Theatre Voices 86–91. Print.
• –––. "Pinter, Harold". 657–58 in The Reader's Encyclopedia of World Drama. Ed. John Gassner and Edward Quinn. New York: Crowell, 1969. Print.
• Wästberg, Per. "The Nobel Prize in Literature 2005: Presentation Speech". Nobelprize.org. The Nobel Foundation and The Swedish Academy, 10 December 2005. Web, 2 Oct. 2007. (Full text; links to video clips of the Nobel Ceremony provided online.)
• West, Samuel. "Fathers and Sons: How Does It Feel to Act in a Pinter Play for Radio Alongside the Man Himself? Samuel West Reveals All". Guardian.co.uk. Guardian Media Group, 17 Mar. 2007. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• Wilfred Owen Association Newsletter 4 Aug. 2004. Print.
• Woolf, Henry. "My 60 Years in Harold's Gang". Guardian.co.uk. Guardian Media Group, 12 July 2007. Web. 11 Oct. 2007.

Multimedia resources

• Brantley, Ben. "A Master of Menace" (audio file). Hyperlinked in "Multimedia". In "Harold Pinter". The New York Times on the Web 13 Oct. 2005, Times Topics. 9 Oct. 2007.
• BWW News Desk. "Photo Flash: NO MAN'S LAND at the Duke of York....Photos by Jeremy Whelehan". BroadwayWorld.com. Broadway World, 10 Nov. 2008. Web. 26 Dec. 2008.
• Celebration (2000). More 4. Channel Four, London. Television. Channel 4, 26 Feb. 2007. Web. 6 Jan. 2009. (Includes video clips of filmed stage prod.; first broadcast Feb. 2007.)
• Harold Pinter: Art, Truth & Politics: The Nobel Prize Lecture. © Copyright 2006 Illuminations. All Rights Reserved. Transmission Channel 4, 2005. DVD. 46 mins. (DVD and VHS video recordings. Catalogue listing.) 2 Oct. 2007. (Features preview video clip.)
• "Harold Pinter Slideshow". Hyperlinked in "Multimedia". In "Harold Pinter". The New York Times on the Web, Times Topics. New York Times, 13 Oct. 2005, Times Topics. 9 Oct. 2007.
• "The Hothouse". By Harold Pinter. Dir. Ian Rickson. Lyttelton Theatre, Royal National Theatre, London. 11 July – 27 Oct. 2007. National Theatre Online, n.d. Web. 6 Jan. 2009. (Features NT Video clip of stage prod.)
• Mondello, Bob, and Robert Siegel. "Remembrances: An Appreciation of Harold Pinter". All Things Considered. National Public Radio. 25 Dec. 2008. 25 Dec. 2008. (Hyperlinked audio clip; 3 mins., 42 secs.)
• "Playwright Harold Pinter Dies". BBC News. BBC, 25 Dec. 2008. Web. 25 Dec. 2008. (Features photographs and video). (See selection of Obituaries below.)
• "Press Releases & Press Packs" for Pinter at the BBC. BBC Press Office 3 Oct. 2002. 2 Oct. 2007.
• Sleuth. Sony Pictures Classics. Sony Pictures, n.d. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. (Features video clip of film trailer.)
• Sleuth at IMDb. IMDb.com, (updated) 2009. Web. 6 Jan. 2009. (Features updated news and video clips, including film trailer.)
• Tamara's Return (1998) at IMDb. Episode 4 of Season 2 (204). Dawson's Creek: The Complete Second Season. DVD. Sony Pictures, (released) 16 Dec. 2003. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.
• Tennant, Neil, and Chris Lowe (The Pet Shop Boys). "Up Against It". Song lyrics. petshopboys.co.uk: The Official Site. 2 Oct. 2007. ("Browse all lyrics alphabetically" accessible via "Lyric of the day: Read more". Requires Adobe Flash Player 8 or above.)
• Working With Pinter. Dir. Harry Burton. First televised on More 4, Channel 4 (UK), 26 Feb. 2007. Repeated 9 Mar. 2007. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. (Program listing. Features Windows Media Player video clip.) [Screened at Artist and Citizen: 50 Years of Performing Pinter, University of Leeds, 12 Apr. 2007; at the East End Film Festival, at Genesis Mile End Cinema, London, 23 Apr. 2007; and at the The End of the Pier International Film Festival, Bognor Regis, West Sussex, 1 May 2007.]

Obituaries and related articles

• Adams, Stephen. "Harold Pinter Directs His Own Funeral". Daily Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 31 Dec. 2008. Web. 6 Jan. 2009. ("His plays were masterpieces of artistic control. And even at his own funeral Harold Pinter made sure he exerted a director's influence.")
• Billington, Michael. "Goodnight, Sweet Prince: Shakespearean Farewell to Pinter". Guardian.co.uk. Guardian Media Group, 1 Jan. 2009. Web. 1 Jan. 2009.
• –––. "Harold Pinter". Guardian.co.uk. Guardian Media Group, 25 Dec. 2008. Web. 25 Dec. 2008.
• British Library (BL). "Harold Pinter (1930–2008)". Harold Pinter Archive Blog: British Library Curators on Cataloguing the Pinter Archive. British Library, 29 Dec. 2008. Web. 2 Jan. 2009.
• Daily Mail Reporter. "Breaking News: Nobel Prize-winning Playwright Harold Pinter Dies Aged 78". Daily Mail. Associated Newspapers Ltd, 25 Dec. 2008. Web. 25 Dec. 2008.
• Dodds, Paisley (Associated Press). "Nobel-winning Playwright Harold Pinter Dies at 78". Associated Press. Rpt. in Google Hosted News. Google, 25 Dec. 2008. Web. 26 Dec. 2008.
• Eden, Richard. Harold Pinter Faces Opposition to Memorial in Poet's Corner". Daily Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 3 Jan. 2009. Web. 3 Jan. 2009.
• "Friends Bid Pinter Farewell". BBC News. BBC, 1 Jan. 2009. Web. 1 Jan. 2009.
• Gussow, Mel, and Ben Brantley. "Harold Pinter, Playwright of the Pause, Dies at 78". New York Times. New York Times, 25 Dec. 2008, Theater. Web. 26 Dec. 2008. (Web version of article listed below.)
• –––. "Harold Pinter, Whose Silences Redefined Drama, Dies at 78". New York Times 26 Dec. 2008, national ed., sec. A: 1, A22–23. Print. [Cites "Online: A Pinter Appraisal: An audio evaluation by Ben Brantley, reviews of Mr. Pinter's plays and more". Print version of article listed above.]
• "Harold Pinter Tribute". Granta. Granta, 25 Dec. 2008. Web. 2 Jan. 2009.
• "Obituary: Harold Pinter". BBC News. BBC, 25 Dec. 2008. Web. 25 Dec. 2008.
• Smith, Alastair. "Pinter to be Honoured Before Final Performance of No Man's Land". The Stage, News. The Stage Newspaper Group Ltd, 2 Jan. 2009. Web. 4 Jan. 2009.
• "Pinter Ends It All with a Double Plot". Mail Online. Associated Newspapers Ltd, 1 Jan. 2009. Web. 4 Jan. 2009.
• Taylor-Batty, Mark, comp. "In Memoriam: Harold Pinter". Harold Pinter Society Webpages. The Harold Pinter Society, 1 Jan. 2009. Web. 1 Jan. 2009. ("Harold Pinter - playwright, poet, actor, director, political activist - died on 24 December 2008, aged 78 ... Here are a few of the obituaries and commentaries released by the international press and online theatre community. [Contains "Key links" and a hyperlinked "Full list" periodically being updated.])
• "Times Obituary: Harold Pinter". Times. News Corporation, 25 Dec. 2008. Web. 25 Dec. 2008.
• Ulaby, Neda. "Remembrances: Remembering Influential Playwright Harold Pinter". Day to Day. National Public Radio, 25 Dec. 2008. Web. 25 Dec. 2008. (Includes audio clip.)
• Wainwright, Hilary. "In Words and Silences". Red Pepper. Red Pepper magazine, Dec. 2008. Web. 3 Jan. 2009. ("Hilary Wainwright reflects on Harold Pinter and Red Pepper.")
• "West End Pays Tribute to Pinter". BBC News. BBC, 27 Dec. 2008. Web. 1 Jan. 2009. (Includes video clip.)