View source for Harold Pinter

{{short description|British playwright (1930–2008)}}
{{redirect|Pinter|other people named Pinter|Pinter (surname)}}
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{{Use British English|date=July 2015}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2017}}
{{Infobox writer
| name        = Harold Pinter
| honorific_suffix = {{postnominals|country=GBR|size=100%|CH|CBE}}
| image       = Harold-pinter-atp.jpg
| caption     = Pinter in 2005
| birth_date  = {{birth date|1930|10|10|df=y}}
| birth_place = London, England
| death_date  = {{death date and age|2008|12|24|1930|10|10|df=yes}}
| death_place = London, England
| spouse      = {{Plainlist|
* {{marriage|[[Vivien Merchant]] <br/>|1956|1980|end=divorced}}
* {{marriage|[[Antonia Fraser|Lady Antonia Fraser]] <br/>|1980}}
}}
| children    = 1
| occupation  = Playwright, screenwriter, actor, theatre director, poet
| alma_mater    = [[Royal Central School of Speech and Drama]]
| period      = 1947–2008
| awards      = {{Plainlist|
* [[Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour]] (2002)
* [[Nobel Prize in Literature]] (2005)
* [[Légion d'honneur]] (2007)
* [[David Cohen Prize]] (1995)
* [[Laurence Olivier Awards|Laurence Olivier Award]] (1996)
}}
| website     = {{URL|http://www.haroldpinter.org}}
| portaldisp  = y
| signature   = Harold Pinter Signature.svg
| module = {{Listen |embed= yes |filename= Harold Pinter BBC Radio4 Front Row 26 Dec 2008 b00gy71c.flac |title= Harold Pinter's voice |type= speech |description= from the BBC programme ''[[Front Row (radio programme)|Front Row Interviews]]'', 26 December 2008.<ref>{{Cite episode |title= Michael Caine |series= Front Row Interviews |series-link= Front Row (radio programme) |url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00gy71c |station= [[BBC Radio 4]] |date= 26 December 2008 |access-date= 18 January 2014 }}</ref> }}
}}

'''Harold Pinter''' {{postnominals|country=GBR|size=100%|CH|CBE}} ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|p|ɪ|n|t|ər}}; 10 October 1930&nbsp;– 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A [[List of Nobel laureates in Literature|Nobel Prize]] winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include ''[[The Birthday Party (play)|The Birthday Party]]'' (1957), ''[[The Homecoming]]'' (1964) and ''[[Betrayal (play)|Betrayal]]'' (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include ''[[The Servant (1963 film)|The Servant]]'' (1963), ''[[The Go-Between (1971 film)|The Go-Between]]'' (1971), ''[[The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)|The French Lieutenant's Woman]]'' (1981), ''[[The Trial (1993 film)|The Trial]]'' (1993) and ''[[Sleuth (2007 film)|Sleuth]]'' (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television and film productions of his own and others' works.

Pinter was born and raised in [[Metropolitan Borough of Hackney|Hackney]], east London, and educated at [[Hackney Downs School]]. He was a sprinter and a keen cricket player, acting in school plays and writing [[poetry]]. He attended the [[Royal Academy of Dramatic Art]] but did not complete the course. He was fined for refusing [[national service]] as a [[conscientious objector]]. Subsequently, he continued training at the [[Central School of Speech and Drama]] and worked in repertory theatre in Ireland and England. In 1956 he married actress [[Vivien Merchant]] and had a son, Daniel, born in 1958. He left Merchant in 1975 and married author [[Antonia Fraser|Lady Antonia Fraser]] in 1980.

Pinter's career as a playwright began with a production of ''[[The Room (play)|The Room]]'' in 1957. His second play, ''[[The Birthday Party (play)|The Birthday Party]]'', closed after eight performances but was enthusiastically reviewed by critic [[Harold Hobson]]. His early works were described by critics as "[[comedy of menace]]". Later plays such as ''[[No Man's Land (play)|No Man's Land]]'' (1975) and ''[[Betrayal (play)|Betrayal]]'' (1978) became known as "[[memory play]]s". He appeared as an actor in productions of his own work on radio and film, and directed nearly 50 productions for stage, theatre and screen. Pinter received over 50 awards, prizes and other honours, including the [[2005 Nobel Prize in Literature|Nobel Prize in Literature]] in 2005 and the French [[Légion d'honneur]] in 2007.

Despite frail health after being diagnosed with [[esophageal cancer|oesophageal cancer]] in December 2001, Pinter continued to act on stage and screen, last performing the title role of [[Samuel Beckett]]'s one-act monologue ''[[Krapp's Last Tape#Harold Pinter|Krapp's Last Tape]]'', for the 50th anniversary season of the [[Royal Court Theatre]], in October 2006. He died from [[liver cancer]] on 24 December 2008.

==Biography==

===Early life and education===
Pinter was born on 10 October 1930, in [[Metropolitan Borough of Hackney|Hackney]], east London, the only child of British Jewish parents of Eastern European descent: his father, Hyman "Jack" Pinter (1902–1997) was a ladies' tailor; his mother, Frances (née Moskowitz; 1904–1992), a housewife.<ref name=GussowConv103>Harold Pinter, as quoted in Gussow, ''Conversations with Pinter'' 103.</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=Pinter|first=Harold|title=Harold Pinter: An Inventory of His Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center|url=https://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/taro/uthrc/00108/hrc-00108.html|access-date=2021-04-27|website=legacy.lib.utexas.edu|language=en}}</ref> Pinter believed an aunt's erroneous view that the family was [[Sephardi Jews|Sephardic]] and had fled the [[Spanish Inquisition]]; thus, for his early poems, Pinter used the pseudonym ''Pinta'' and at other times used variations such as ''da Pinto''.<ref name=Billington1>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 1–5.</ref>  Later research by [[Antonia Fraser|Lady Antonia Fraser]], Pinter's second wife, revealed the legend to be apocryphal; three of Pinter's grandparents came from Poland and the fourth from [[Odesa]], so the family was [[Ashkenazi Jews|Ashkenazic]].<ref name=Billington1/><ref name=JewishBackground>For some accounts of the significance of Pinter's Jewish background, see Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 2, 40–41, 53–54, 79–81, 163–64, 177, 286, 390, 429.</ref><ref name=Woolf1>[[Cf.]] {{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2007/jul/12/theatre.haroldpinter |title=My 60 Years in Harold's Gang |first=Henry |last=Woolf |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=12 July 2007 |publisher=[[Guardian Media Group|GMG]] |location=London |issn=0261-3077 |oclc=60623878 |access-date=26 June 2011 |archive-url=https://www.webcitation.org/5zu6rYC0X?url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2007/jul/12/theatre.haroldpinter |archive-date= 3 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}; Woolf, as quoted in Merritt, "Talking about Pinter" 144–45; {{cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/howard-jacobson/howard-jacobson-harold-pinter-didnt-get-my-joke-and-i-didnt-get-him-ndash-until-it-was-too-late-1297593.html |title=Harold Pinter didn't get my joke, and I didn't get him – until it was too late |first=Howard |last=Jacobson |work=[[The Independent]] |date=10 January 2009 |publisher=[[Independent News & Media|INM]] |location=London |issn=0951-9467 |oclc=185201487 |access-date=26 June 2011 |archive-url=https://www.webcitation.org/5zu70UVpG?url=http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/howard-jacobson/howard-jacobson-harold-pinter-didnt-get-my-joke-and-i-didnt-get-him-ndash-until-it-was-too-late-1297593.html |archive-date= 3 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Pinter's family home in London is described by his official biographer [[Michael Billington (critic)|Michael Billington]] as "a solid, red-brick, three-storey villa just off the noisy, bustling, traffic-ridden thoroughfare of the [[Lower Clapton]] Road".<ref name="Billington, Harold Pinter 2">Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 2.</ref> In 1940 and 1941, after [[the Blitz]], Pinter was [[Evacuations of civilians in Britain during World War II|evacuated]] from their house in London to [[Cornwall]] and [[Reading, Berkshire|Reading]].<ref name="Billington, Harold Pinter 2"/>  Billington states that the "life-and-death intensity of daily experience" before and during the Blitz left Pinter with profound memories "of loneliness, bewilderment, separation and loss: themes that are in all his works."<ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 5–10.</ref>

Pinter discovered his social potential as a student at [[Hackney Downs School]], a London grammar school, between 1944 and 1948. "Partly through the school and partly through the social life of Hackney Boys' Club&nbsp;... he formed an almost [[Wiktionary:sacerdotal|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."<ref name=Woolf1/><ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 11.</ref>  A major influence on Pinter was his inspirational English teacher Joseph Brearley, who directed him in school plays and with whom he took long walks, talking about literature.<ref>A collection of Pinter's correspondence with Brearley is held in the [[Harold Pinter Archive]] in the British Library.  Pinter's memorial epistolary poem "Joseph Brearley 1909–1977 (Teacher of English)", published in his collection ''Various Voices'' (177), ends with the following stanza: "You're gone.  I'm at your side,/Walking with you from [[Clapton Pond]] to [[Finsbury Park]],/And on, and on."</ref>  According to Billington, under Brearley's instruction, "Pinter shone at English, wrote for the school magazine and discovered a gift for acting."<ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 10–11.</ref><ref>See also "Introduction by Harold Pinter, ''Nobel Laureate''", 7–9 in Watkins, ed., '' 'Fortune's Fool': The Man Who Taught Harold Pinter: A Life of Joe Brearley''.</ref>  In 1947 and 1948, he played [[Romeo Montague|Romeo]] and [[Macbeth (Macbeth)|Macbeth]] in productions directed by Brearley.<ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 13–14.</ref>

At the age of 12, Pinter began writing poetry, and in spring 1947, his poetry was first published in the ''Hackney Downs School Magazine''.<ref>Baker and Ross 127.</ref>  In 1950 his poetry was first published outside the school magazine, in ''[[Poetry London]]'', some of it under the pseudonym "Harold Pinta".<ref name=RansomColl>{{cite web|url=http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/uthrc/00108/hrc-00108.html |title=Harold Pinter: An Inventory of His Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center |last=Staff |work=[[Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center]] |publisher=[[University of Texas at Austin]] |year=2011 |access-date=26 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604035449/http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/uthrc/00108/hrc-00108.html |archive-date= 4 June 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 29–35.</ref>

Pinter was an atheist.<ref>"The Meeting is a about the afterlife, despite Pinter being well known as an atheist. He admitted it was a "strange" piece for him to have written." Pinter 'on road to recovery', BBC.co.uk, 26 August 2002.</ref>

===Sport and friendship===
Pinter enjoyed running and broke the Hackney Downs School sprinting record.<ref>Gussow, ''Conversations with Pinter'' 28–29.</ref><ref name=Bakerchap1>Baker, "Growing Up", chap. 1 of ''Harold Pinter'' 2–23.</ref>
He was a [[cricket]] enthusiast, taking his bat with him when evacuated during the Blitz.<ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 7–9 and 410.</ref> In 1971, he told [[Mel Gussow]]: "one of my main obsessions in life is the game of cricket—I play and watch and read about it all the time."<ref>Gussow, ''Conversations with Pinter'' 25.</ref> He was chairman of the Gaieties Cricket Club, a supporter of [[Yorkshire County Cricket Club|Yorkshire Cricket Club]],<ref>Gussow, ''Conversations with Pinter'' 8.</ref> and devoted a section of his official website to the sport.<ref name=Gaieties>{{cite web|url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/cricket/index.shtml |title=Cricket |editor=Batty, Mark |work=haroldpinter.org |access-date=5 December 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110613203308/http://www.haroldpinter.org/cricket/index.shtml |archive-date= 13 June 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref> One wall of his study was dominated by a portrait of himself as a young man playing cricket, which was described by [[Sarah Lyall]], writing in ''[[The New York Times]]'': "The painted Mr. Pinter, poised to swing his bat, has a wicked glint in his eye; testosterone all but flies off the canvas."<ref name=Lyall>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/movies/07lyal.html |title=Harold Pinter – Sleuth |first=Sarah |last=Lyall |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=7 October 2007 |location=New York City |issn=0362-4331 |access-date=26 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120104055337/http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/movies/07lyal.html |archive-date= 4 January 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref name=Sherwin>{{cite news|url=http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/article5963091.ece |title=Portrait of Harold Pinter playing cricket to be sold at auction |first=Adam |last=Sherwin |work=[[TimesOnline]] |date=24 March 2009 |publisher=[[News Intl]] |location=London |issn=0140-0460 |access-date=26 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110616211500/http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/article5963091.ece |archive-date= 16 June 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  Pinter approved of the "urban and exacting idea of cricket as a bold theatre of aggression."<ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 410.</ref>  After his death, several of his school contemporaries recalled his achievements in sports, especially cricket and running.<ref>Supple, T. Baker, and Watkins, in Watkins, ed.<!--For bibliographical details, if needed, see [[Harold Pinter Bibliography]].--></ref>  The [[BBC Radio 4]] memorial tribute included an essay on Pinter and cricket.<ref name=Burtoncricket>{{cite web |url= http://www.lordstaverners.org/news.cfm?fullID=70 |title=Latest News & Charity Fundraising News from The Lord's Taverners |first=Harry |last=Burton |work=[[Lord's Taverners]] |year=2009 |archive-url=  https://web.archive.org/web/20090627142610/http://www.lordstaverners.org/news.cfm?fullID=70|archive-date=27 June 2009 |access-date=26 June 2011}}</ref>

Other interests that Pinter mentioned to interviewers are family, love and sex, drinking, writing, and reading.<ref name=GussowBillMerr>See, e.g., Gussow, ''Conversations with Pinter'' 25–30; Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 7–16; and Merritt, ''Pinter in Play'' 194.</ref> 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, and worships their resilience and strength. But, in his early work especially, they are often seen as disruptive influences on some pure and [[Platonic love|Platonic]] ideal of male friendship: one of the most crucial of all Pinter's lost [[Garden of Eden|Edens]]."<ref name=Woolf1/><ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 10–12.</ref>

===Early theatrical training and stage experience===

Beginning in late 1948, Pinter attended the [[Royal Academy of Dramatic Art]] for two terms, but hating the school, missed most of his classes, feigned a nervous breakdown, and dropped out in 1949.<ref name=BillingtonBatty1>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 20–25, 31–35; and Batty, ''About Pinter'' 7.</ref>  In 1948 he was called up for [[National service|National Service]]. He was initially refused registration as a [[conscientious objector]], leading to his twice being prosecuted, and fined, for refusing to accept a medical examination, before his CO registration was ultimately agreed.<ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 20–25.</ref>  He had a small part in the Christmas [[pantomime]] ''[[Dick Whittington and His Cat]]'' at the Chesterfield Hippodrome in 1949 to 1950.<ref name=BillingtonBatty2>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 37; and Batty, ''About Pinter'' 8.</ref>  From January to July 1951, he attended the [[Central School of Speech and Drama]].<ref name=BillingtonBatty3>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 31, 36, and 38; and Batty, ''About Pinter'' xiii and 8.</ref>

From 1951 to 1952, he toured Ireland with the [[Anew McMaster]] repertory company, playing over a dozen roles.<ref name=Mac>Pinter, "Mac", ''Various Voices'' 36–43.</ref> In 1952, he began acting in regional English repertory productions; from 1953 to 1954, he worked for the [[Donald Wolfit]] Company, at the King's Theatre, [[Hammersmith]], performing eight roles.<ref name=BattyAct>{{cite web|editor=Batty, Mark |url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/acting/index.shtml |title=Acting |work=haroldpinter.org |access-date=29 January 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110709085529/http://www.haroldpinter.org/acting/index.shtml |archive-date= 9 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref name=BillingtonActing>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 20–25, 31, 36, and 37–41.</ref> From 1954 until 1959, Pinter acted under the stage name David Baron.<ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 3 and 47–48.  Pinter's paternal grandmother's maiden name was Baron.  He also used the name for an autobiographical character in the first draft of his novel ''The Dwarfs''.</ref><ref name=Rep>{{cite web|url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/acting/index.shtml |title=The Harold Pinter Acting Career |editor=Batty, Mark |work=haroldprinter.org |access-date=30 January 2011 |archive-url=https://www.webcitation.org/5zu83jkqV?url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/acting/index.shtml |archive-date= 3 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}, {{cite web|url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/acting/acting_otherrepwork.shtml |title=Work in Various Repertory Companies 1954–1958 |editor=Batty, Mark |work=haroldprinter.org |access-date=30 January 2011 |archive-url=https://www.webcitation.org/5zu88k0a7?url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/acting/acting_otherrepwork.shtml |archive-date= 3 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref> In all, Pinter played over 20 roles under that name.<ref name=Rep/><ref name=BillingtonHP1>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 49–55.</ref>  To supplement his income from acting, Pinter worked as a waiter, a postman, a bouncer, and a snow-clearer, meanwhile, according to Mark Batty,  "harbouring ambitions as a poet and writer."<ref>Batty, ''About Pinter'' 10.</ref>  In October 1989 Pinter recalled: "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."<ref>Gussow, ''Conversations with Pinter'' 83.</ref> During that period, he also performed occasional roles in his own and others' works for radio, TV, and film, as he continued to do throughout his career.<ref name=Rep/><ref name=BillingtonActing2>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 20–25, 31, 36, 38.</ref>

===Marriages and family life===
[[File:Harold Pinter's home, Worthing.jpg|thumb|right|Pinter's house in [[Worthing]], 1962–64]]
From 1956 until 1980, Pinter was married to [[Vivien Merchant]], an actress whom he met on tour,<ref name=Telegraphobit>{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/3949227/Harold-Pinter-the-most-original-stylish-and-enigmatic-writer-in-the-post-war-revival-of-British-theatre.html |title=Harold Pinter: the most original, stylish and enigmatic writer in the post-war revival of British theatre |last=Staff |work=[[The Daily Telegraph]] |date=25 December 2008 |location=London |issn=0307-1235 |oclc=49632006 |access-date=26 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110116050733/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/3949227/Harold-Pinter-the-most-original-stylish-and-enigmatic-writer-in-the-post-war-revival-of-British-theatre.html |archive-date= 16 January 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref> perhaps best known for her performance in the 1966 film ''[[Alfie (1966 film)|Alfie]]''.  Their son Daniel was born in 1958.<ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 54 and 75.</ref>  Through the early 1970s, Merchant appeared in many of Pinter's works, including ''[[The Homecoming]]'' on stage (1965) and screen (1973), but the marriage was turbulent.<ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 252–56.</ref> For seven years, from 1962 to 1969, Pinter was engaged in a clandestine affair with BBC-TV presenter and journalist [[Joan Bakewell]], which inspired his 1978 play ''[[Betrayal (play)|Betrayal]]'',<ref name="Billington, pp. 257">Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 257–67.</ref> and also throughout that period and beyond he had an affair with an American socialite, whom he nicknamed "Cleopatra". This relationship was another secret he kept from both his wife and Bakewell.<ref>Fraser, ''Must You Go?'' 86.</ref>  Initially, ''Betrayal'' was thought to be a response to his later affair with historian [[Antonia Fraser]], the wife of [[Hugh Fraser (British politician)|Hugh Fraser]], and Pinter's "marital crack-up".<ref name="Billington, p. 257">Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 257.</ref>

Pinter and Merchant had both met Antonia Fraser in 1969, when all three worked together on a [[National Gallery (London)|National Gallery]] programme about [[Mary, Queen of Scots]]; several years later, on 8–9 January 1975, Pinter and Fraser became romantically involved.<ref name=Fraserone>Fraser, Chap. 1: "First Night", ''Must You Go?'' 3–19.</ref>  That meeting initiated their five-year extramarital love affair.<ref>Fraser, chap. 1: "First Night"; chap. 2: "Pleasure and a Good Deal of Pain"; chap. 8: "It Is Here"; and chap. 13: "Marriage — Again", ''Must You Go?'' 3–33, 113–24, and 188–201.</ref><ref name=Bill252>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 252–53.</ref> After hiding the relationship from Merchant for two and a half months, on 21 March 1975, Pinter finally told her "I've met somebody".<ref>Fraser, ''Must You Go?'' 13.</ref>  After that, "Life in Hanover Terrace gradually became impossible", and Pinter moved out of their house on 28 April 1975, five days after the première of ''[[No Man's Land (play)|No Man's Land]]''.<ref name=Billington253>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 253–55.</ref><ref name=People>{{cite magazine |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,917680-1,00.html |title=People |last=Staff |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |publisher=Time Inc. |date=11 August 1975 |access-date=26 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110520231356/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,917680-1,00.html |archive-date=20 May 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

In mid-August 1977, after Pinter and Fraser had spent two years living in borrowed and rented quarters, they moved into her former family home in [[Holland Park]],<ref>Fraser, ''Must You Go?'' 29, 65–78, and 83.</ref> where Pinter began writing ''Betrayal''.<ref name="Billington, p. 257"/>  He reworked it later, while on holiday at the [[Grand Hotel Eastbourne|Grand Hotel]] in [[Eastbourne]], in early January 1978.<ref>Fraser, ''Must You Go?'' 85–88.</ref>  After the Frasers' divorce had become final in 1977 and the Pinters' in 1980, Pinter married Fraser on 27 November 1980.<ref>Fraser, "''27 November — The Diary of Lady Antonia Pinter''", ''Must You Go?'' 122–23.</ref>  Because of a two-week delay in Merchant's signing the divorce papers, however, the reception had to precede the actual ceremony, originally scheduled to occur on his 50th birthday.<ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 271–76.</ref>  Vivien Merchant died of acute alcoholism in the first week of October 1982, at the age of 53.<ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter''  276.</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/07/arts/death-of-vivien-merchant-is-ascribed-to-alcoholism.html |title=Death of Vivien Merchant Is Ascribed to Alcoholism |last=Staff |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=7 October 1982 |location=New York City |issn=0362-4331 |access-date=26 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100121083451/http://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/07/arts/death-of-vivien-merchant-is-ascribed-to-alcoholism.html |archive-date= 21 January 2010 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Billington writes that Pinter "did everything possible to support" her and regretted that he ultimately became estranged from their son, Daniel, after their separation, Pinter's remarriage, and Merchant's death.<ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 276 and 345–47.</ref>

A reclusive gifted musician and writer, Daniel changed his surname from Pinter to Brand, the maiden name of his maternal grandmother,<ref name="Bill255"/> before Pinter and Fraser became romantically involved; while according to Fraser, his father could not understand it, she says that she could: "Pinter is such a distinctive name that he must have got tired of being asked, 'Any relation?{{'"}}<ref>Fraser, ''Must You Go?'' 44.</ref>  Michael Billington wrote that Pinter saw Daniel's name change as "a largely pragmatic move on Daniel's part designed to keep the press&nbsp;... at bay."<ref name=Bill254>Billington 254–55; cf. 345.</ref>  Fraser told Billington that Daniel "was very nice to me at a time when it would have been only too easy for him to have turned on me&nbsp;... simply because he had been the sole focus of his father's love and now manifestly wasn't."<ref name=Bill254/>  Still unreconciled at the time of his father's death, Daniel Brand did not attend Pinter's funeral.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/sarah-sands/sarah-sands-pinters-funeral-ndash-more-final-reckoning-than-reconciliation-1224214.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220509/https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/sarah-sands/sarah-sands-pinters-funeral-ndash-more-final-reckoning-than-reconciliation-1224214.html |archive-date=9 May 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|title=Pinter's funeral – more final reckoning than reconciliation|last=Sands|first=Sarah|newspaper=The Independent|date=4 January 2009|access-date=24 April 2020}}</ref>

Billington observes that "The break-up with Vivien and the new life with Antonia was to have a profound effect on Pinter's personality and his work," though he adds that Fraser herself did not claim to have influence over Pinter or his writing.<ref name=Bill255>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 255.</ref> In her own contemporaneous diary entry dated 15 January 1993, Fraser described herself more as Pinter's  literary midwife.<ref>Fraser, ''Must You Go?'' 211: "With all my timings [of ''Moonlight''], Harold calls me his editor.  Not so.  I was the midwife saying, 'Push, Harold, push,' but the act of creation took place elsewhere and the baby would have been born anyway."</ref> Indeed, she told Billington that "other people [such as [[Peggy Ashcroft]], among others] had a shaping influence on [Pinter's] politics" and attributed changes in his writing and political views to a change from "an unhappy, complicated personal life&nbsp;... to a happy, uncomplicated personal life", so that "a side of Harold which had always been there was somehow released.  I think you can see that in his work after ''[[No Man's Land (play)|No Man's Land]]'' [1975], which was a very bleak play."<ref name=Bill255/>

Pinter was content in his second marriage and enjoyed family life with his six adult stepchildren and 17 step-grandchildren.<ref name=BillingtonHPDD>See Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 388, 429–30.</ref> Even after battling cancer for several years, he considered himself "a very lucky man in every respect".<ref name=Lucky>{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolavconsole/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_4780000/newsid_4785400/nb_rm_4785475.stm |title=Harold Pinter on Newsnight Review |last=Wark |first=Kirsty |work=[[Newsnight Review|Newsnight]] |publisher=BBC |date=23 June 2006 |access-date=26 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121112034535/http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolavconsole/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_4780000/newsid_4785400/nb_rm_4785475.stm |archive-date= 12 November 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  [[Sarah Lyall]] notes in her 2007 interview with Pinter in ''[[The New York Times]]'' that his "latest work, a slim pamphlet called 'Six Poems for A.', comprises poems written over 32 years, with "A" of course being Lady Antonia. The first of the poems was written in Paris, where she and Mr. Pinter traveled soon after they met. More than three decades later the two are rarely apart, and Mr. Pinter turns soft, even cozy, when he talks about his wife."<ref name=Lyall/> In that interview 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.{{' "}}<ref name=Lyall/>  After his death, Fraser told ''[[The Guardian]]'': "He was a great man, and it was a privilege to live with him for over 33 years. He will never be forgotten."<ref name="Siddique">{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/dec/25/harold-pinter-dies |title=Nobel prize winning dramatist Harold Pinter dies |first=Haroon |last=Siddique |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=25 December 2008 |publisher=[[Guardian Media Group|GMG]] |location=London |issn=0261-3077 |oclc=60623878 |access-date=26 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110905141709/http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/dec/25/harold-pinter-dies |archive-date= 5 September 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite news
 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2008/dec/26/harold-pinter-death-tributes 
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 |archive-date= 11 January 2012
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== Civic activities and political activism ==
{{Main|Harold Pinter and politics}}
In 1948–49, when he was 18, Pinter opposed the politics of the [[Cold War]], leading to his decision to become a [[conscientious objector]] and to refuse to comply with [[Conscription in the United Kingdom|National Service]] in the British military. However, he told interviewers that, if he had been old enough at the time, he would have fought against the [[Nazism|Nazis]] in [[World War II]].<ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 21–24, 92, and 286.</ref>  He seemed to express ambivalence, both indifference and hostility, towards political structures and politicians in his Fall 1966 ''[[The Paris Review|Paris Review]]'' interview conducted by [[Larry Bensky|Lawrence M. Bensky]].<ref name=Bensky>{{cite magazine |url= http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4351/the-art-of-theater-no-3-harold-pinter |title=The Art of Theater No. 3, Harold Pinter |first=Lawrence M. |last=Bensky |magazine=Paris Review |publisher=Paris Review Foundation|year=1966|volume=Fall 1966 |issue=39 |access-date=26 June 2011|archive-date=1 January 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070101223541/http://www.theparisreview.org/media/4351_PINTER.pdf|format=PDF}}</ref>  Yet, he had been an early member of the [[Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament]] 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 and in subsequent related campaigns.<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2005/at42.htm |title=Letter from the President: Hail the Nobel Laureates – Apostles of Human Curiosity! |journal=ANC Today|publisher=[[African National Congress]]|volume=5|issue=42|date=21 October 2005|last=Mbeki |first=Thabo |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080622112823/http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2005/at42.htm |archive-date= 22 June 2008| access-date=26 June 2011|oclc=212406525}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=43 |work=ANC Today |publisher=[[African National Congress]] |title=Free Mandela: An Account of the Campaign to Free Nelson Mandela and All Other Political Prisoners in South Africa |first=E.S. |last=Reddy |date=July 1988 |access-date=26 June 2011 |oclc=212406525 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111015215838/http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=43 |archive-date= 15 October 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref name=politics>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 286–305 (chap. 15: "Public Affairs"), 400–03, and 433–41; and Merritt, ''Pinter in Play'' 171–209 (chap. 8: "Cultural Politics", espec. "Pinter and Politics").</ref>  In "A Play and Its Politics", a 1985 interview with Nicholas Hern, Pinter described his earlier plays retrospectively from the perspective of the politics of power and the dynamics of oppression.<ref name=MerrittPandP>Merritt, "Pinter and Politics," ''Pinter in Play'' 171–89.</ref>

In his last 25 years, Pinter increasingly focused his essays, interviews and public appearances directly on political issues.  He was an officer in [[International PEN]], travelling with American playwright [[Arthur Miller]] to [[Turkey]] in 1985 on a mission co-sponsored with a [[Helsinki Watch]] committee to investigate and protest against the torture of imprisoned writers.  There he met victims of political oppression and their families. Pinter's experiences in Turkey and his knowledge of the Turkish suppression of the [[Kurdish language]] inspired his 1988 play ''[[Mountain Language]].''<ref name=BillingtonGussow>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 309–10; and Gussow, ''Conversations with Pinter'' 67–68.</ref>  He was also an active member of the [[Cuba Solidarity Campaign]], an organisation that "campaigns in the UK against the US blockade of [[Cuba]]".<ref name=CubaSolidarityCampaign>{{cite web|url=http://www.cuba-solidarity.org/aims.asp |title=Cuba Solidarity Campaign – Our Aims |work=cuba-solidarity.org |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110718215408/http://www.cuba-solidarity.org/aims.asp |archive-date= 18 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  In 2001, Pinter joined the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milošević (ICDSM), which appealed for a fair trial and for the freedom of [[Slobodan Milošević]], signing a related "Artists' Appeal for Milošević" in 2004.<ref name=timesobit>{{cite news|url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5398006.ece |title=Harold Pinter: An impassioned artist who lost direction on the political stage |first=Oliver |last=Kamm |work=[[TimesOnline]] |date=26 December 2008 |publisher=[[News International]] |location=London |issn=0140-0460 |access-date=26 June 2011 |archive-url=http://wayback.vefsafn.is/wayback/20100417023241/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5398006.ece |archive-date= 17 April 2010 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Pinter strongly opposed the 1991 [[Gulf War]], the 1999 [[NATO]] bombing campaign in [[Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|FR Yugoslavia]] during the [[Kosovo War]], the United States' 2001 [[War in Afghanistan (2001–present)|War in Afghanistan]], and the [[2003 invasion of Iraq|2003 Invasion of Iraq]].  Among his provocative political statements, Pinter called Prime Minister [[Tony Blair]] a "deluded idiot" and compared the administration of President [[George W. Bush]] to [[Nazi Germany]].<ref name=timesobit/><ref name=ChrisafisandTilden>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jun/11/books.arts |title=Pinter blasts 'Nazi America' and 'deluded idiot' Blair |first1=Angelique |last1=Chrisafis |first2=Imogen |last2=Tilden |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=11 June 2003 |publisher=[[Guardian Media Group|GMG]] |location=London |issn=0261-3077 |oclc=60623878 |access-date=26 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110517075730/http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/jun/11/books.arts |archive-date= 17 May 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  He stated that the United States "was charging towards world domination while the American public and Britain's '[[mass-murder]]ing' prime minister sat back and watched."<ref name=ChrisafisandTilden /> He was very active in the [[Peace movement|antiwar movement]] in the United Kingdom, speaking at rallies held by the [[Stop the War Coalition]]<ref name=Turinspeech>{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3585148/The-American-administration-is-a-bloodthirsty-wild-animal.html |title=The American administration is a bloodthirsty wild animal |first=Harold |last=Pinter |work=[[The Daily Telegraph]] |date=11 December 2002 |location=London |issn=0307-1235 |oclc=49632006 |access-date=26 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110629120116/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3585148/The-American-administration-is-a-bloodthirsty-wild-animal.html |archive-date= 29 June 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref> and frequently criticising American aggression, as when he asked rhetorically, in his acceptance speech for the [[Wilfred Owen]] Award for Poetry on 18 March 2007: "What would Wilfred Owen make of the [[2003 invasion of Iraq|invasion of Iraq]]? A bandit act, an act of blatant [[state terrorism]], demonstrating absolute contempt for the conception of [[international law]]."<ref>Pinter, ''Various Voices'' 267.</ref><ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 428.</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://articles.cnn.com/2006-03-16/entertainment/pinter.europe_1_theater-harold-pinter-prize-ceremony |title=Harold Pinter: Theater's angry old man |first=Porter |last=Anderson |work=CNN |publisher=Turner Broadcasting System |date=17 March 2006 |access-date=26 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111016132831/http://articles.cnn.com/2006-03-16/entertainment/pinter.europe_1_theater-harold-pinter-prize-ceremony?_s=PM:SHOWBIZ |archive-date=16 October 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Pinter earned a reputation for being pugnacious, enigmatic, taciturn, terse, prickly, explosive and forbidding.<ref>{{cite news |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.-->|title=Harold Pinter's poetry: The known and the unknown |newspaper=[[The Economist]]  |location=London |publisher=[[The Financial Times]] |date=20 August 2011 |volume=400 |issue=8747}}</ref> Pinter's blunt political statements, and the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature, elicited strong criticism and even, at times, provoked ridicule and personal attacks.<ref name="HariPryce-Jones">See, e.g., {{cite web|url=http://www.johannhari.com/2005/12/05/harold-pinter-does-not-deserve-the-nobel-prize |title=Harold Pinter does not deserve the Nobel Prize : Johann Hari |first=Johann |last=Hari |work=johannhari.com |date=5 December 2005 |access-date=27 June 2011 |archive-url=https://www.webcitation.org/5zu9LmhTL?url=http://www.johannhari.com/2005/12/05/harold-pinter-does-not-deserve-the-nobel-prize |archive-date= 3 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}; {{cite news|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB112950379731670200#articleTabs%3Darticle |title=The Sinister Mediocrity of Harold Pinter - WSJ.com |first=Christopher |last=Hitchens |work=[[The Wall Street Journal]] |url-access=subscription |date=17 October 2005 |publisher=[[Dow Jones & Company|Dow Jones]] |location=New York City |issn=0099-9660 |access-date=27 June 2011 |archive-url=https://www.webcitation.org/5zu9P9hXJ?url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB112950379731670200.html |archive-date= 3 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}; and
{{cite web|url=http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/215795/harold-pinters-special-triteness/david-pryce-jones |title=Harold Pinter's Special Triteness |first=David |last=Pryce-Jones |work=National Review Online |url-access=subscription |date=28 October 2005 |access-date=27 June 2011 |archive-url=https://www.webcitation.org/5zu9UAqOB?url=http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/215795/harold-pinters-special-triteness/david-pryce-jones |archive-date= 3 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  The historian [[Geoffrey Alderman]], author of the official history of Hackney Downs School, expressed his own "Jewish View" of Harold Pinter: "Whatever his merit as a writer, actor and director, on an ethical plane Harold Pinter seems to me to have been intensely flawed, and his moral compass deeply fractured."<ref name=Alderman>{{cite web |url=http://www.currentviewpoint.com/cgibin/news.cgi?id=11&command=shownews&newsid=1075 |title=Harold Pinter – A Jewish View |first=Geoffrey |last=Alderman |work=currentviewpoint.com |year=2011 |access-date=27 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110708213833/http://www.currentviewpoint.com/cgibin/news.cgi?id=11&command=shownews&newsid=1075 |archive-date=8 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref> [[David Edgar (playwright)|David Edgar]], writing in ''[[The Guardian]]'', defended Pinter against what he termed Pinter's "being berated by the belligerati" like [[Johann Hari]], who felt that he did not "deserve" to win the Nobel Prize.<ref name=Edgard>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/dec/29/harold-pinter-politics |title=Pinter's early politics |first=David |last=Edgar |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=29 December 2008 |publisher=[[Guardian Media Group|GMG]] |location=London |issn=0261-3077 |oclc=60623878 |access-date=26 June 2011 |quote=The idea that he was a dissenting figure only in later life ignores the politics of his early work. |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121110122749/http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/29/harold-pinter-politics |archive-date= 10 November 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref name=PinterColossal>See also the comments of [[Václav Havel]] and others, excerpted in "A Colossal Figure", which accompanies a reprinting of Pinter's essay {{cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/pinter-torture-and-misery-in-name-of-freedom-510906.html |title=Pinter: Torture and misery in name of freedom – World Politics, World – The Independent |first=Harold |last=Pinter |work=[[The Independent]] |date=14 October 2005 |publisher=[[Independent News & Media|INM]] |location=London |issn=0951-9467 |oclc=185201487 |access-date=27 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100216021411/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/pinter-torture-and-misery-in-name-of-freedom-510906.html |archive-date= 16 February 2010 |url-status=dead }}, adapted from Pinter's "Acceptance Speech" for the 2005 [[Wilfred Owen]] Award for Poetry published in Pinter, ''Various Voices'' 267–68.</ref>  Later Pinter continued to campaign against the Iraq War and on behalf of other political causes that he supported.

Pinter signed the mission statement of [[Jews for Justice for Palestinians]] in 2005 and its full-page advertisement, "What Is Israel Doing? A Call by Jews in Britain", published in ''[[The Times]]'' on 6 July 2006,<ref name=Alderman/> and he was a patron of the [[Palestine Festival of Literature]]. In April 2008, Pinter signed the statement "We're not celebrating Israel's anniversary". The statement noted: "We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land.", "We will celebrate when Arab and Jew live as equals in a peaceful Middle East"<ref>{{cite web |title=Letters: We're not celebrating Israel's anniversary |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/30/israelandthepalestinians |website=The Guardian |date=30 April 2008}}</ref>

==Career==
{{Further|Works of Harold Pinter|Characteristics of Harold Pinter's work}}
[[File:Harold Pinter 1962.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|Pinter in 1962]]

===As actor===
Pinter's acting career spanned over 50 years and, although he often played [[villain]]s, included a wide range of roles on stage and in radio, film, and television.<ref name=BattyAct/><ref name=BFIFilmTVCredits>{{cite web|url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/453152/credits.html |title=Pinter, Harold (1930–2008) Credits |work=BFI Screenonline |year=2011 |publisher=[[British Film Institute]] |access-date=3 July 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040705202826/http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/453152/credits.html |archive-date= 5 July 2004 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  In addition to roles in radio and television adaptations of his own plays and dramatic sketches, early in his screenwriting career he made several cameo appearances in films based on his own screenplays; for example, as a society man in ''[[The Servant (1963 film)|The Servant]]'' (1963) and as Mr. Bell in ''[[Accident (1967 film)|Accident]]'' (1967), both directed by [[Joseph Losey]]; and as a bookshop customer in his later film ''[[Turtle Diary]]'' (1985), starring [[Michael Gambon]], [[Glenda Jackson]], and [[Ben Kingsley]].<ref name=BattyAct/>

Pinter's notable film and television roles included the lawyer Saul Abrahams opposite [[Peter O'Toole]] in ''[[Rogue Male (1976 film)|Rogue Male]]'', [[BBC Television|BBC TV]]'s 1976 adaptation of [[Geoffrey Household]]'s 1939 novel, and a drunk Irish journalist in ''[[Langrishe, Go Down (film)|Langrishe, Go Down]]'' (starring [[Judi Dench]] and [[Jeremy Irons]]) distributed on [[BBC Two]] in 1978<ref name=BFIFilmTVCredits/> and released in movie theatres in 2002.<ref name=HPFLC>{{cite web|url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/home/lincolnfestival.shtml |title=The Lincoln Center Festival |editor=Batty, Mark |work=haroldpinter.org |year=2001 |access-date=3 July 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110613213945/http://www.haroldpinter.org/home/lincolnfestival.shtml |archive-date= 13 June 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  Pinter's later film roles included the criminal Sam Ross in ''Mojo'' (1997), written and directed by [[Jez Butterworth]], based on Butterworth's [[Mojo (play)|play of the same name]]; Sir Thomas Bertram (his most substantial feature-film role) in ''[[Mansfield Park (1999 film)|Mansfield Park]]'' (1998), a character that Pinter described as "a very civilised man&nbsp;... a man of great sensibility but in fact, he's upholding and sustaining a totally brutal system [the slave trade] from which he derives his money"; and Uncle Benny, opposite [[Pierce Brosnan]] and [[Geoffrey Rush]], in ''[[The Tailor of Panama (film)|The Tailor of Panama]]'' (2001).<ref name=BattyAct/>  In [[Television movie|television films]], he played Mr. Bearing, the father of [[ovarian cancer]] patient Vivian Bearing, played by [[Emma Thompson]] in [[Mike Nichols]]'s [[HBO]] film of the [[Pulitzer Prize]]-winning play ''[[Wit (film)|Wit]]'' (2001); and the Director opposite [[John Gielgud]] (Gielgud's last role) and [[Rebecca Pidgeon]] in ''[[Catastrophe (play)|Catastrophe]]'', by [[Samuel Beckett]], directed by [[David Mamet]] as part of ''Beckett on Film'' (2001).<ref name=BattyAct/><ref name=BFIFilmTVCredits/>

===As director===
Pinter began to direct more frequently during the 1970s, becoming an associate director of the [[Royal National Theatre|National Theatre]] (NT) in 1973.<ref name=HPNT>{{cite web|url=http://nationaltheatre.org.uk/download.php?id=4019 |title=Harold Pinter, Director and Playwright at the National Theatre |format=MSWord |publisher=[[Royal National Theatre]] |access-date=27 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110529045912/http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/download.php?id=4019 |archive-date= 29 May 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  He directed almost 50 productions of his own and others' plays for stage, film, and television, including 10 productions of works by [[Simon Gray]]: the stage and/or film premières of ''[[Butley (film)|Butley]]'' (stage, 1971; film, 1974), ''[[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).<ref name=Telegraphobit/>  Several of those productions starred [[Alan Bates]] (1934–2003), who originated the stage and screen roles of not only Butley but also Mick in Pinter's first major commercial success, ''[[The Caretaker]]'' (stage, 1960; film, 1964); and in Pinter's double-bill produced at the [[Lyric Hammersmith]] in 1984, he played Nicolas in ''[[One for the Road (Harold Pinter play)|One for the Road]]'' and the cab driver in ''[[Victoria Station (play)|Victoria Station]]''.<ref>{{cite journal |url= http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/277/49/155675618w16/purl=rc1_TTDA_0_CS269061759&dyn=3!xrn_21_0_CS269061759&hst_1?sw_aep=uwesteng |title=Critics' Choice |last=Staff|journal=[[The Times]] |publisher=Times Digital Archive |date=31 March 1984 |page=16 |issue=61794 |url-access=subscription |access-date=27 June 2011}}</ref>  Among over 35 plays that Pinter directed were ''Next of Kin'' (1974), by [[John Hopkins (screenwriter)|John Hopkins]]; ''[[Blithe Spirit (play)|Blithe Spirit]]'' (1976),  by [[Noël Coward]]; ''[[The Innocents (play)|The Innocents]]'' (1976), by [[William Archibald (playwright)|William Archibald]]; ''Circe and Bravo'' (1986), by [[Donald Freed]]; ''[[Taking Sides (play)|Taking Sides]]'' (1995), by [[Ronald Harwood]]; and ''[[Twelve Angry Men (play)|Twelve Angry Men]]'' (1996), by [[Reginald Rose]].<ref name=HPNT/><ref name=BattyDir>{{cite web|url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/directing/index.shtml |title=Stage, film and TV productions directed by Harold Pinter |editor=Batty, Mark |work=haroldpinter.org |year=2011 |access-date=27 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110613201759/http://www.haroldpinter.org/directing/index.shtml |archive-date= 13 June 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

===As playwright===
Pinter was the author of 29 plays and 15 dramatic sketches and the co-author of two works for stage and radio.<ref name=Plays>{{cite web|editor1=Evans, Daisy |editor2=Herdman, Katie |editor3=Lankester, Laura |url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/index.shtml |title=Plays |work=haroldpinter.org |access-date=9 May 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110613203248/http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/index.shtml |archive-date= 13 June 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  He was considered to have been one of the most influential modern British dramatists,<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/3949591/Harold-Pinter-one-of-the-most-influential-British-playwrights-of-modern-times.html |title=Harold Pinter: one of the most influential British playwrights of modern times |last=Staff |work=[[The Daily Telegraph]] |date=25 December 2008 |location=London |issn=0307-1235 |oclc=49632006 |access-date=27 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110518121424/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/3949591/Harold-Pinter-one-of-the-most-influential-British-playwrights-of-modern-times.html |archive-date= 18 May 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref name=NYTobit>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/26/theater/26pinter.html |title=Harold Pinter, Playwright of the Anxious Pause, Dies at 78 |first1=Mel |last1=Gussow |first2=Ben |last2=Brantley |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=25 December 2008 |location=New York City |issn=0362-4331 |access-date=27 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121103184959/http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/26/theater/26pinter.html |archive-date= 3 November 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Along with the 1967 [[Tony Award for Best Play]] for ''The Homecoming'' and several other American awards and award nominations, he and his plays received many awards in the UK and elsewhere throughout the world.<ref>Gordon, "Chronology", ''Pinter at 70'' xliii–lxv; Batty, "Chronology", ''About Pinter'' xiii–xvi.</ref>  His style has entered the English language as an adjective, "[[Characteristics of Harold Pinter's work#Pinteresque|Pinteresque]]", although Pinter himself disliked the term and found it meaningless.<ref name=Wark>{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolavconsole/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_4780000/newsid_4785400 |title=Harold Pinter on Newsnight Review with Kirsty Wark |work=[[Newsnight Review]] |publisher=BBC |access-date=26 June 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121112034520/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/5110060.stm |archive-date= 12 November 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

===="Comedies of menace" (1957–1968)====

Pinter's first play, ''[[The Room (play)|The Room]]'', written and first performed in 1957, was a student production at the [[University of Bristol]], directed by his good friend, actor [[Henry Woolf]], who also originated the role of Mr. Kidd (which he reprised in 2001 and 2007).<ref name=Plays/>  After Pinter mentioned that he had an idea for a play, Woolf asked him to write it so that he could direct it to fulfill a requirement for his postgraduate work. Pinter wrote it in three days.<ref name=MerrittWoolf>Merritt, "Talking about Pinter" 147.</ref> The production was described by Billington as "a staggeringly confident debut which attracted the attention of a young producer, [[Michael Codron]], who decided to present Pinter's next play, ''[[The Birthday Party (play)|The Birthday Party]]'', at the [[Lyric Hammersmith]], in 1958."<ref name=Billobit>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2008/dec/25/pinter-theatre |title=The most provocative, poetic and influential playwright of his generation |first=Michael |last=Billington |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=25 December 2008 |publisher=[[Guardian Media Group|GMG]] |location=London |issn=0261-3077 |oclc=60623878 |access-date=27 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110227094739/http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2008/dec/25/pinter-theatre |archive-date= 27 February 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Written in 1957 and produced in 1958, Pinter's second play, ''The Birthday Party'', one of his best-known works, was initially both a commercial and critical disaster, despite an enthusiastic review in ''[[The Sunday Times]]'' by its influential drama critic [[Harold Hobson]],<ref>{{cite news|last=Hobson|first=Harold|title=The Screw Turns Again|newspaper=The Sunday Times|date=25 May 1958|location=London}}</ref> which appeared only after the production had closed and could not be reprieved.<ref name=Billobit/><ref>Hobson, "The Screw Turns Again"; cited by Merritt in "Sir Harold Hobson: The Promptings of Personal Experience", ''Pinter in Play'' 221–25; rpt. in {{cite web|url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_bdayparty.shtml |title=The Birthday Party – Premiere |first=Harold |last=Hobson |work=haroldpinter.org |year=2011 |access-date=27 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110709085019/http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_bdayparty.shtml |archive-date= 9 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  Critical accounts often quote Hobson:

{{blockquote|I am well aware that Mr Pinter[']s play received extremely bad notices last Tuesday morning. At the moment I write these [words] 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 [as in Class Honours]; and that Pinter, on the evidence of his work, possesses the most original, disturbing and arresting talent in theatrical London&nbsp;... Mr Pinter and ''The Birthday Party'', despite their experiences last week, will be heard of again. Make a note of their names.}}

Pinter himself and later critics generally credited Hobson as bolstering him and perhaps even rescuing his career.<ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 85; Gussow, ''Conversations with Pinter'' 141.</ref>

In a review published in 1958, borrowing from the subtitle of ''The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace'', a play by [[David Campton]], critic [[Irving Wardle]] called Pinter's early plays "[[comedy of menace]]"—a label that people have applied repeatedly to his work.<ref name=Merritt3>Merritt, ''Pinter in Play'' 5, 9, 225–26, and 310.</ref> Such plays begin with an apparently innocent situation that becomes both threatening and "[[Absurdism|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; they became friends, sending each other drafts of their works in progress for comments.<ref name = Wark /><ref name=BillingtonWark>See Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 64, 65, 84, 197, 251 and 354</ref>

Pinter wrote ''[[The Hothouse]]'' in 1958, which he shelved for over 20 years (See "Overtly political plays and sketches" below).  Next he wrote ''[[The Dumb Waiter]]'' (1959), which premièred in Germany and was then produced in a [[double bill]] with ''The Room'' at the [[Hampstead Theatre|Hampstead Theatre Club]], in London, in 1960.<ref name="Plays"/>  It was then not produced often until the 1980s, and it has been revived more frequently since 2000, including the [[West End theatre|West End]] [[Trafalgar Studios]] production in 2007.  The first production of ''[[The Caretaker]]'', at the [[Arts Theatre|Arts Theatre Club]], in London, in 1960, established Pinter's theatrical reputation.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://roundabouttheatre.org/fc/fall03/jones.htm |title=Roundabout Theatre Company – |first=David |last=Jones |work=Front & Center Online |publisher=Roundabout Theatre Company |date=Fall 2003 |access-date=27 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727223238/http://roundabouttheatre.org/fc/fall03/jones.htm |archive-date= 27 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  The play transferred to the [[Duchess Theatre]] in May 1960 and ran for 444 performances,<ref name=sheffcare>{{cite web|title=Background to The Caretaker|url=http://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/creativedevelopmentprogramme/productions/thecaretaker/background.shtml|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090514101843/http://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/creativedevelopmentprogramme/productions/thecaretaker/background.shtml|archive-date=14 May 2009|work=Sheffield Theatres education resource|publisher=Sheffield Theatres|access-date=11 July 2011}}</ref> receiving an [[Evening Standard Award]] for best play of 1960.<ref>{{cite web|last=Shama|first=Sunita|title=Pinter awards saved for the nation|url=http://www.mla.gov.uk/news_and_views/press_releases/2010/Pinter_awards|work=British Library Press Release|publisher=Museums Arts and Libraries|access-date=11 July 2011|date=20 October 2010|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727121002/http://www.mla.gov.uk/news_and_views/press_releases/2010/Pinter_awards|archive-date=27 July 2011}}</ref>  Large radio and television audiences for his one-act play ''[[A Night Out (play)|A Night Out]]'', along with the popularity of his revue sketches, propelled him to further critical attention.<ref>Merritt, ''Pinter in Play'' 18.</ref>  In 1964, ''The Birthday Party'' was revived both on television (with Pinter himself in the role of Goldberg) and on stage (directed by Pinter at the [[Aldwych Theatre]]) and was well received.<ref>Merritt, ''Pinter in Play'' 18, 219–20.</ref>

By the time Peter Hall's London production of ''The Homecoming'' (1964) reached [[Broadway theatre|Broadway]] in 1967, Pinter had become a celebrity playwright, and the play garnered four [[Tony Award]]s, among other awards.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.tonyawards.com/p/tonys_search?start=0&year=&award=&lname=&fname=&show=%3Ci%3EThe+Homecoming%3C%2Fi%3E |title=The Homecoming – 1967 |work=tonyawards.com |publisher=Tony Award Productions |year=2011 |access-date=3 July 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181201140353/https://www.tonyawards.com/p/tonys_search?start=0&year=&award=&lname=&fname=&show=%3Ci%3EThe+Homecoming%3C%2Fi%3E |archive-date=1 December 2018 |url-status=dead }}</ref> During this period, Pinter also wrote the radio play ''[[A Slight Ache]]'', first broadcast on the [[BBC Third Programme]] in 1959 and then adapted to the stage and performed at the [[Arts Theatre|Arts Theatre Club]] in 1961.  ''A Night Out'' (1960) was broadcast to a large audience on [[ABC Weekend TV]]'s television show ''[[Armchair Theatre]]'', after being transmitted on BBC Radio 3, also in 1960.  His play ''[[Night School (play)|Night School]]'' was first televised in 1960 on [[Associated Rediffusion]].  ''[[The Collection (play)|The Collection]]'' premièred at the [[Aldwych Theatre]] in 1962, and ''The Dwarfs'', adapted from Pinter's then unpublished novel of the same title, was first broadcast on radio in 1960, then adapted for the stage (also at the Arts Theatre Club) in a double bill with ''[[The Lover (play)|The Lover]]'', which had previously been televised by Associated Rediffusion in 1963; and ''[[Tea Party (play)|Tea Party]]'', a play that Pinter developed from his 1963 short story, first broadcast on [[BBC TV]] in 1965.<ref name=Plays/>

Working as both a screenwriter and as a playwright, Pinter composed a script called ''[[The Basement (play)#Origin: "The Compartment"|The Compartment]]'' (1966), for a trilogy of films to be contributed by [[Samuel Beckett]], [[Eugène Ionesco]], and Pinter, of which only Beckett's film, titled ''[[Film (film)|Film]]'', was actually produced.  Then Pinter turned his unfilmed script into a television play, which was produced as ''[[The Basement (play)|The Basement]]'', both on [[BBC 2]] and also on stage in 1968.<ref name=BRChronology>Baker and Ross, "Chronology" xxiii–xl.</ref>

===="Memory plays" (1968–1982)====

From the late 1960s through the early 1980s, Pinter wrote a series of plays and sketches that explore complex ambiguities, elegiac mysteries, comic vagaries, and other "quicksand-like" characteristics of [[memory]] and which critics sometimes classify as Pinter's "[[memory play]]s".<ref name=BillingtonETP>Billington, Introduction, "Pinter: Passion, Poetry, Politics", ''Europe Theatre Prize–X Edition'', [[Turin]], 10–12 March 2006. Retrieved 29 January 2011.  [[Cf.]] Billington, chap. 29: "Memory Man" and "Afterword: Let's Keep Fighting", ''Harold Pinter'' 388–430.</ref> These include ''[[Landscape (play)|Landscape]]'' (1968), ''[[Silence (1969 play)|Silence]]'' (1969), ''[[Night (sketch)|Night]]'' (1969), ''[[Old Times]]'' (1971), ''[[No Man's Land (play)|No Man's Land]]'' (1975), ''The Proust Screenplay'' (1977), ''[[Betrayal (play)|Betrayal]]'' (1978), ''[[Family Voices]]'' (1981), ''[[Victoria Station (play)|Victoria Station]]'' (1982), and ''[[A Kind of Alaska]]'' (1982).  Some of Pinter's later plays, including ''Party Time'' (1991), ''[[Moonlight (play)|Moonlight]]'' (1993), ''[[Ashes to Ashes (play)|Ashes to Ashes]]'' (1996), and ''[[Celebration (play)|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 earlier memory plays.<ref name=BillingtonETP/><ref name=MemoryPlays>See Batty, ''About Pinter''; Grimes; and Baker (all ''passim'').</ref>

====Overtly political plays and sketches (1980–2000)====
Following a three-year period of creative drought in the early 1980s after his marriage to Antonia Fraser and the death of Vivien Merchant,<ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 258.</ref> Pinter's plays tended to become shorter and more overtly political, serving as critiques of [[oppression]], [[torture]], and other abuses of human rights,<ref name=MerrittPIPGrimes>Merritt, ''Pinter in Play'' xi–xv and 170–209; Grimes 19.</ref> linked by the apparent "invulnerability of power."<ref>Grimes 119.</ref>  Just before this hiatus, in 1979, Pinter re-discovered his manuscript of ''[[The Hothouse]]'', which he had written in 1958 but had set aside; he revised it and then directed its first production himself at [[Hampstead Theatre]] in London, in 1980.<ref name=HHNote>{{cite web|url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_hothouse.shtml |title=The Hothouse – Premiere |first=Benedict |last=Nightingale |work=Originally published in the [[New Statesman]], archived at haroldpinter.org |year=2001 |access-date=27 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110613220750/http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_hothouse.shtml |archive-date= 13 June 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Like his plays of the 1980s, ''The Hothouse'' concerns authoritarianism and the abuses of power politics, but it is also a comedy, like his earlier [[Comedy of menace|comedies of menace]].  Pinter played the major role of Roote in a 1995 revival at the [[Minerva Theatre, Chichester]].<ref name=MerrittGrimesHH>Merritt, "Pinter Playing Pinter" (''passim''); and Grimes 16, 36–38, 61–71.</ref>

Pinter's brief dramatic sketch ''Precisely'' (1983) is a duologue between two bureaucrats exploring the absurd power politics of mutual nuclear annihilation and [[Deterrence theory|deterrence]].  His first overtly political one-act play is ''[[One for the Road (Harold Pinter play)|One for the Road]]'' (1984).  In 1985 Pinter stated that whereas his earlier plays presented metaphors for power and powerlessness, the later ones present literal realities of power and its abuse.<ref>Hern 8–9, 16–17, and 21.</ref> Pinter's "political theatre dramatizes the interplay and conflict of the opposing poles of involvement and disengagement."<ref>Hern 19.</ref>  ''[[Mountain Language]]'' (1988) is about the Turkish suppression of the [[Kurdish language]].<ref name=BillingtonGussow/>  The dramatic sketch ''The New World Order'' (1991) provides what Robert Cushman, writing in ''[[The Independent]]'' described as "10 nerve-wracking minutes" of two men threatening to torture a third man who is blindfolded, gagged and bound in a chair; Pinter directed the British première at the [[Royal Court Theatre|Royal Court Theatre Upstairs]], where it opened on 9 July 1991, and the production then transferred to Washington, D.C., where it was revived in 1994.<ref name=NWO>{{cite web|url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_newworldorder.shtml |title=Ten Nerve Racking Minutes of Pinter |first=Robert |last=Cushman |work=[[Independent on Sunday]], archived at haroldpinter.org |date=21 July 1991 |access-date=27 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110614003407/http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_newworldorder.shtml |archive-date= 14 June 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  Pinter's longer [[political satire]] ''Party Time'' (1991) premièred at the [[Almeida Theatre]] in London, in a double-bill with ''Mountain Language''.  Pinter adapted it as a screenplay for television in 1992, directing that production, first broadcast in the UK on [[Channel 4]] on 17 November 1992.<ref name=PT>Grimes 101–28 and 139–43; {{cite web|url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_partytime.shtml |title=Plays |editor=Batty, Mark |work=haroldpinter.org |year=2011 |access-date=3 July 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110614004649/http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_partytime.shtml |archive-date= 14 June 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Intertwining political and personal concerns, his next full-length plays, ''[[Moonlight (play)|Moonlight]]'' (1993) and ''[[Ashes to Ashes (play)|Ashes to Ashes]]'' (1996) are set in domestic households and focus on dying and death; in their personal conversations in ''Ashes to Ashes'', Devlin and Rebecca allude to unspecified atrocities relating to the [[The Holocaust|Holocaust]].<ref name=MerrittGrimesATA>Merritt, "Harold Pinter's ''Ashes to Ashes'': Political/Personal Echoes of the Holocaust" (''passim''); Grimes 195–220.</ref> After experiencing the deaths of first his mother (1992) and then his father (1997), again merging the personal and the political, Pinter wrote the poems "Death" (1997) and "The Disappeared" (1998).

Pinter's last stage play, ''[[Celebration (play)|Celebration]]'' (2000), is a social satire set in an opulent restaurant, which lampoons [[The Ivy (United Kingdom)|The Ivy]], a fashionable venue in London's West End theatre district, and its patrons who "have just come from performances of either the ballet or the opera. Not that they can remember a darn thing about what they saw, including the titles.  [These] gilded, foul-mouthed souls are just as myopic when it comes to their own table mates (and for that matter, their food), with conversations that usually connect only on the surface, if there."<ref name=BrantleyLC>{{cite web|url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/home/lincolnfestival.shtml |title=Pinter's Silences, Richly Eloquent |last=Brantley |first=Ben |author-link=Ben Brantley |work=[[The New York Times]] archived at haroldpinter.org |date=27 July 2001 |access-date=9 May 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110613213945/http://www.haroldpinter.org/home/lincolnfestival.shtml |archive-date= 13 June 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  On its surface the play may appear to have fewer overtly political resonances than some of the plays from the 1980s and 1990s; but its central male characters, brothers named Lambert and Matt, are members of the elite (like the men in charge in ''Party Time''), who describe themselves as "peaceful strategy consultants [because] we don't carry guns."<ref>Pinter, ''Celebration'' 60.</ref>  At the next table, Russell, a banker, describes himself as a "totally disordered personality&nbsp;... a psychopath",<ref>Pinter, ''Celebration'' 39.</ref> while Lambert "vows to be reincarnated as '[a] more civilised, [a] gentler person, [a] nicer person'."<ref>Pinter, ''Celebration'' 56.</ref><ref>Grimes 129.</ref>  These characters' deceptively smooth exteriors mask their extreme viciousness.  ''Celebration'' evokes familiar [[Characteristics of Harold Pinter's work#Pinteresque|Pinteresque]] political contexts: "The ritzy loudmouths in 'Celebration'&nbsp;... and the quieter working-class mumblers of 'The Room'&nbsp;... have everything in common beneath the surface".<ref name=BrantleyLC/> "Money remains in the service of entrenched power, and the brothers in the play are 'strategy consultants' whose jobs involve force and violence&nbsp;... It is tempting but inaccurate to equate the comic power inversions of the social behaviour in ''Celebration'' with lasting change in larger political structures", according to Grimes, for whom the play indicates Pinter's pessimism about the possibility of changing the status quo.<ref>Grimes 130.</ref>  Yet, as the Waiter's often comically unbelievable reminiscences about his grandfather demonstrate in ''Celebration'', Pinter's final stage plays also extend some [[expressionism|expressionistic]] aspects of his earlier "memory plays", while harking back to his "comedies of menace", as illustrated in the characters and in the Waiter's final speech:
{{blockquote|My grandfather introduced me to the mystery of life and I'm still in the middle of it.  I can't find the door to get out.  My grandfather got out of it.  He got right out of it.  He left it behind him and he didn't look back.  He got that absolutely right.  And I'd like to make one further interjection.<br /> ''He stands still.  Slow fade''.<ref>Pinter, ''Celebration'' 72.</ref>}}

During 2000–2001, there were also simultaneous productions of ''[[Remembrance of Things Past (play)|Remembrance of Things Past]]'', Pinter's stage adaptation of his unpublished ''Proust Screenplay'', written in collaboration with and directed by [[Di Trevis]], at the [[Royal National Theatre]], and a revival of ''[[The Caretaker]]'' directed by [[Patrick Marber]] and starring [[Michael Gambon]], [[Rupert Graves]], and [[Douglas Hodge]], at the [[Comedy Theatre]].<ref name=Plays/>

Like ''Celebration'', Pinter's penultimate sketch, ''Press Conference'' (2002), "invokes both torture and the fragile, circumscribed existence of dissent".<ref>Grimes 135.</ref>  In its première in the [[Royal National Theatre|National Theatre]]'s two-part production of ''Sketches'', despite undergoing chemotherapy at the time, Pinter played the ruthless Minister willing to murder little children for the benefit of "The State".<ref name=Sketches>{{cite web|url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_sketches.shtml |first=Alastair |last=Macaulay |title=The Playwright's Triple Risk |work=[[The Financial Times]] archived at haroldpinter.org |access-date=9 May 2009 |date=13 February 2002 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110613214229/http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_sketches.shtml |archive-date= 13 June 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

===As screenwriter===
Pinter composed 27 screenplays and film scripts for cinema and television, many of which were filmed, or adapted as stage plays.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/harold-pinter-true-star-of-the-screen-1212438.html |title=Harold Pinter: True star of the screen |first=Geoffrey |last=MacNab |work=[[The Independent]] |date=27 December 2008 |publisher=[[Independent News & Media|INM]] |location=London |issn=0951-9467 |oclc=185201487 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110624013629/http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/harold-pinter-true-star-of-the-screen-1212438.html |archive-date= 24 June 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref> His fame as a screenwriter began with his three screenplays written for films directed by [[Joseph Losey]], leading to their close friendship: ''[[The Servant (1963 film)|The Servant]]'' (1963), based on the novel by [[Robin Maugham]]; ''[[Accident (1967 film)|Accident]]'' (1967), adapted from the novel by [[Nicholas Mosley]]; and ''[[The Go-Between (1971 film)|The Go-Between]]'' (1971), based on the novel by [[L. P. Hartley]].<ref>{{cite news|first=Jeff |last=Dawson |url =http://www.lexisnexis.com/uk/nexis/results/listview/listview.do?risb=21_T12277901740&startDocNo=1&sort=null&format=GNBEXLIST&dateSelector=All&segSpecifyDate=Date&day1=&month1=&year1=&day2=&month2=&year2=&numericUnit=1&calendarUnit=days&BCT=G1 |title=Open Your Eyes to These Cult Classics |work=[[The Sunday Times]] archived at LexisNexis|date= 21 June 2009|page= 10|publisher=[[News International]]|location=London|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Films based on Pinter's adaptations of his own stage plays are: ''[[The Caretaker#Film adaptation|The Caretaker]]'' (1963), directed by [[Clive Donner]]; ''[[The Birthday Party (1968 film)|The Birthday Party]]'' (1968), directed by [[William Friedkin]]; ''[[The Homecoming (film)|The Homecoming]]'' (1973), directed by Peter Hall; and ''[[Betrayal (1983 film)|Betrayal]]'' (1983), directed by [[David Jones (director)|David Jones]].

Pinter also adapted other writers' novels to screenplays, including ''[[The Pumpkin Eater]]'' (1964), based on the novel by [[Penelope Mortimer]], directed by [[Jack Clayton]]; ''[[The Quiller Memorandum]]'' (1966), from the 1965 spy novel ''The Berlin Memorandum'', by [[Elleston Trevor]], directed by [[Michael Anderson (director)|Michael Anderson]]; ''[[The Last Tycoon (1976 film)|The Last Tycoon]]'' (1976), from the unfinished novel by [[F. Scott Fitzgerald]], directed by [[Elia Kazan]]; ''[[The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)|The French Lieutenant's Woman]]'' (1981), from the novel by [[John Fowles]], directed by [[Karel Reisz]]; ''[[Turtle Diary]]'' (1985), based on the novel by [[Russell Hoban]]; ''The Heat of the Day'' (1988), a television film, from the 1949 novel by [[Elizabeth Bowen]]; ''[[The Comfort of Strangers (film)|The Comfort of Strangers]]'' (1990), from the novel by [[Ian McEwan]], directed by [[Paul Schrader]]; and ''[[The Trial (1993 film)|The Trial]]'' (1993), from the novel by [[Franz Kafka]], directed by David Jones.<ref>{{cite news |url= https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE1DA1638F937A15752C1A965958260 |title=Kafka's Sinister World by Way of Pinter |first= Janet|last=Maslin |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=24 November 1993 |location=New York City |issn=0362-4331 |access-date=3 July 2011}}</ref>

His commissioned screenplays of others' works for the films ''[[The Handmaid's Tale (film)|The Handmaid's Tale]]'' (1990), ''[[The Remains of the Day (film)|The Remains of the Day]]'' (1990), and ''[[Lolita (1997 film)|Lolita]]'' (1997), remain unpublished and in the case of the latter two films, uncredited, though several scenes from or aspects of his scripts were used in these finished films.<ref>Hudgins 132–39.</ref> His screenplays ''[[Remembrance of Things Past (play)|The Proust Screenplay]]'' (1972), ''Victory'' (1982), and ''[[The Dreaming Child (screenplay by Harold Pinter)|The Dreaming Child]]'' (1997) and his unpublished screenplay ''[[The Tragedy of King Lear (screenplay by Harold Pinter)|The Tragedy of King Lear]]'' (2000) have not been filmed.<ref>Gale, "Appendix A: Quick Reference", ''Sharp Cut'' 416–17.</ref> A section of Pinter's ''Proust Screenplay'' was, however, released as the 1984 film ''[[In Search of Lost Time#Adaptations|Swann in Love]]'' (''Un amour de Swann''), directed by [[Volker Schlöndorff]], and it was also adapted by [[Michael Bakewell]] as a two-hour radio drama broadcast on [[BBC Radio 3]] in 1995,<ref>Baker and Ross xxxiii.</ref> before Pinter and director Di Trevis collaborated to adapt it for the 2000 National Theatre production.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_remembrance.shtml |title=Remembrance of Things Past, Cottesloe Theatre, London, November 2000 |work=haroldpinter.org |access-date=1 July 2009 |editor=Batty, Mark |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110613214134/http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_remembrance.shtml |archive-date= 13 June 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Pinter's last filmed screenplay was an adaptation of the 1970 [[Tony Award]]-winning play ''[[Sleuth (play)|Sleuth]]'', by [[Anthony Shaffer (writer)|Anthony Shaffer]], which was commissioned by [[Jude Law]], one of the film's producers.<ref name=Lyall/> It is the basis for the 2007 film ''[[Sleuth (2007 film)|Sleuth]]'', directed by [[Kenneth Branagh]].<ref name=Lyall/><ref name=Levy1>{{cite web|first=Emanuel |last=Levey |author-link=Emanuel Levy |url=http://www.emanuellevy.com/interview/sleuth-with-pinter-branagh-law-and-caine-3/ |title=Interviews: Sleuth with Pinter, Branagh, Law and Caine |work=emanuellevy.com |date=29 August 2007 |access-date=31 January 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110515140851/http://www.emanuellevy.com/interview/sleuth-with-pinter-branagh-law-and-caine-3/ |archive-date= 15 May 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref name=Levy2>{{cite web |first=Emanuel | last= Levey |author-link =Emanuel Levy |url=http://www.emanuellevy.com/article.php?articleID=6636 |title=Sleuth 2007: Remake or Revamping of Old Play |work=emanuellevy.com |date=29 August 2007 |access-date=31 January 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071009180537/http://www.emanuellevy.com/article.php?articleID=6636 |archive-date=9 October 2007}}</ref> Pinter's screenplays for ''[[The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)|The French Lieutenant's Woman]]'' and ''Betrayal'' were nominated for [[Academy Award]]s in 1981 and 1983, respectively.<ref>Gale, "Appendix B: Honors and Awards for Screenwriting", ''Sharp Cut'' (n. pag.) [418].</ref>

===2001–2008===
[[File:Harold Pinter.JPG|right|thumbnail| Study of Pinter by [[Reginald Gray (artist)|Reginald Gray]], 2007. (''[[New Statesman]]'', 12 January 2009)]]
From 16 to 31 July 2001, a Harold Pinter Festival celebrating his work, curated by [[Michael Colgan (theatre director)|Michael Colgan]], artistic director of the [[Gate Theatre]], Dublin, was held as part of the annual Lincoln Center Festival at [[Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts|Lincoln Center]] in New York City.  Pinter participated both as an actor, as Nicolas in ''One for the Road'', and as a director of a double bill pairing his last play, ''Celebration'', with his first play, ''The Room''.<ref name=reports>Merritt, "Talking about Pinter" (''passim'').</ref>  As part of a two-week "Harold Pinter Homage" at the World Leaders Festival of Creative Genius, held from 24 September to 30 October 2001, at the Harbourfront Centre, in Toronto, Canada, Pinter presented a dramatic reading of ''Celebration'' (2000) and also participated in a public interview as part of the [[Culture in Toronto#Literature|International Festival of Authors]].<ref name=IFOA>{{cite web |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020225161916/http://www.readings.org/news/011001pinter.html |archive-date= 25 February 2002 |title=Harold Pinter Added to IFOA Lineup|url= http://www.readings.org/news/011001pinter.html|work=Harbourfront Reading Series |publisher=Harbourfront Centre |location=Toronto |access-date=27 June 2011}}</ref><ref name=IFOA2>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/09/travel/travel-advisory-toronto-festival-honors-14-leaders-in-the-arts.html |title=Travel Advisory; Toronto Festival Honors 14 Leaders in the Arts – New York Times |last=Staff |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=9 September 2001 |location=New York City |issn=0362-4331 |access-date=28 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110703234324/http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/09/travel/travel-advisory-toronto-festival-honors-14-leaders-in-the-arts.html |archive-date= 3 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>Merritt, "Staging Pinter: From Pregnant Pauses to Political Causes" 123–43.</ref>

In December 2001, Pinter was diagnosed with [[oesophageal cancer]], for which, in 2002, he underwent an operation and [[chemotherapy]].<ref name=BillingtonKoval>{{cite web|url=http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/bwriting/stories/s671912.htm |title=Books and Writing – 15/9/2002: Harold Pinter |first=Ramona |last=Koval |work=[[Radio National|ABC Radio National]] |publisher=[[Australian Broadcasting Corporation]] |date=15 September 2009 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110316201156/http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/bwriting/stories/s671912.htm |archive-date= 16 March 2011 |url-status=dead }}; Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 413–16.</ref>  During the course of his treatment, he directed a production of his play ''No Man's Land'', and wrote and performed in a new sketch, "Press Conference", for a production of his dramatic sketches at the National Theatre, and from 2002 on he was increasingly active in political causes, writing and presenting politically charged poetry, essays, speeches, as well as involved in developing his final two screenplay adaptations, ''The Tragedy of King Lear'' and ''Sleuth'', whose drafts are in the British Library's [[Harold Pinter Archive]] (Add MS 88880/2).<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/manuscripts/HITS0001.ASP?VPath=arevhtml/78575.htm&Search=%27Harold+Pinter%27&Highlight=T |title=Pinter Archive |last=Staff |work=Manuscripts catalogue |publisher=British Library |year=2011 |quote=MS 88880/2 |access-date=4 May 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111124185019/http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/manuscripts/HITS0001.ASP?VPath=arevhtml%2F78575.htm&Search=%27Harold+Pinter%27&Highlight=T |archive-date=24 November 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

From 9 to 25 January 2003, the Manitoba Theatre Centre, in [[Manitoba]], Canada, held a nearly month-long ''PinterFest'', in which over 130 performances of twelve of Pinter's plays were performed by a dozen different theatre companies.<ref name=PinterFest>{{cite web|url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/frn_pinterfestival_ca03.shtml |title=Pinter Fest 2003 |editor=Batty, Mark |work=haroldpinter.org |year=2003 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110613220837/http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/frn_pinterfestival_ca03.shtml |archive-date= 13 June 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  Productions during the Festival included: ''The Hothouse'', ''Night School'', ''The Lover'', ''The Dumb Waiter'', ''The Homecoming'', ''The Birthday Party'', ''Monologue'', ''One for the Road'', ''The Caretaker'', ''Ashes to Ashes'', ''Celebration'', and ''No Man's Land''.<ref name=MerrittPinterFest>Merritt, "PinterFest", in "Forthcoming Publications, Upcoming Productions, and Other Works in Progress", "Harold Pinter Bibliography: 2000–2002" (299).</ref>

In 2005, Pinter stated that he had stopped writing plays and that he would be devoting his efforts more to his political activism and writing poetry: "I think I've written 29 plays. I think it's enough for me&nbsp;... 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&nbsp;... I'm using a lot of energy more specifically about political states of affairs, which I think are very, very worrying as things stand."<ref>{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/4305725.stm |title=Pinter 'to give up writing plays' |first=Mark |last=Lawson |work=[[BBC News]] |date=28 February 2005 |publisher=[[British Broadcasting Corporation|BBC]] |location=London |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120324141852/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4305725.stm |archive-date= 24 March 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref name=Robinson>{{cite web|url=http://news.scotsman.com/uk/Im-written-out-says-controversial.2805471.jp |title=I'm written out, says controversial Pinter |first=David |last=Robinson |work=Scotsman.com News |publisher=Johnston Press Digital Publishing |date=26 August 2006 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110629205724/http://news.scotsman.com/uk/Im-written-out-says-controversial.2805471.jp |archive-date= 29 June 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  Some of this later poetry included "The 'Special Relationship'", "Laughter", and "The Watcher".

From 2005, Pinter experienced ill health, including a rare skin disease called [[pemphigus]]<ref name=Billingtonwritten>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2006/mar/14/theatre.stage |title='I've written 29 damn plays. Isn't that enough?' |first=Michael |last=Billington |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=14 March 2006 |publisher=[[Guardian Media Group|GMG]] |location=London |issn=0261-3077 |oclc=60623878 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100830080949/http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2006/mar/14/theatre.stage |archive-date= 30 August 2010 |url-status=dead }}</ref> and "a form of [[Sepsis|septicaemia]] that afflict[ed] his feet and made it difficult for him to walk."<ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 395.</ref>  Yet, he completed his screenplay for the film of ''Sleuth'' in 2005.<ref name=Lyall/><ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 418–20.</ref><!-- See reference to Sleuth just above-->  His last dramatic work for radio, ''Voices'' (2005), a collaboration with composer [[James Clarke (composer)|James Clarke]], adapting selected works by Pinter to music, premièred on [[BBC Radio 3]] on his 75th birthday on 10 October 2005.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/voices/pip/2v1eq/ |title=BBC – Radio 3 – Voices – Harold Pinter's 75th birthday |last=Staff |work=bbc.co.uk |year=2011 |access-date=4 May 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120207073915/http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/voices/pip/2v1eq/ |archive-date= 7 February 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  Three days later, it was announced that he had won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature.<ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 420.</ref>

In an interview with Pinter in 2006, conducted by critic Michael Billington as part of the cultural programme of the [[2006 Winter Olympics]] in [[Turin]], Italy, Pinter confirmed that he would continue to write poetry but not plays.<ref name=Billingtonwritten/>  In response, the audience shouted ''No'' in unison, urging him to keep writing.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Merritt |first=Susan Hollis |title=Europe Theatre Prize Celebration – Turin, Italy|journal= Harold Pinter Society Newsletter|date= Fall 2006|type=Print}}</ref>  Along with the international symposium on Pinter: Passion, Poetry, Politics, curated by Billington, the 2006 [[Europe Theatre Prize]] theatrical events celebrating Pinter included new productions (in French) of ''Precisely'' (1983), ''One for the Road'' (1984), ''Mountain Language'' (1988), ''The New World Order'' (1991), ''Party Time'' (1991), and ''Press Conference'' (2002) (French versions by Jean Pavans); and ''Pinter Plays, Poetry & Prose'', an evening of dramatic readings, directed by [[Alan Stanford]], of the [[Gate Theatre]], Dublin.<ref name=ETPEvent>{{cite web|url=http://www.premio-europa.org/open_page.php?id=336 |title=Europe Theatre Prize – X Edition – spettacoli |work=premio-europa.org |year=2006 |access-date=29 June 2011 |language=it, en |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727184646/http://www.premio-europa.org/open_page.php?id=336 |archive-date= 27 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  In June 2006, the [[British Academy of Film and Television Arts]] (BAFTA) hosted a celebration of Pinter's films curated by his friend, the playwright [[David Hare (playwright)|David Hare]].  Hare introduced the selection of film clips by saying: "To jump back into the world of Pinter's movies&nbsp;... is to remind yourself of a literate mainstream cinema, focused as much as [[Ingmar Bergman|Bergman]]'s is on the human face, in which tension is maintained by a carefully crafted mix of image and dialogue."<ref name="bill429">Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 429.</ref>

After returning to London from the [[Edinburgh International Book Festival]], in September 2006, Pinter began rehearsing for his performance of the role of [[Krapp's Last Tape#Characters|Krapp]] in [[Samuel Beckett]]'s one-act [[monologue]] ''[[Krapp's Last Tape]]'', which he performed from a motorised wheelchair in a limited run the following month at the [[Royal Court Theatre]] to sold-out audiences and "ecstatic" critical reviews.<ref name=KLTrev>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2006/oct/16/theatre.beckettat100 |title=Krapp's Last Tape, Royal Court, London |first=Michael |last=Billington |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=16 October 2006 |publisher=[[Guardian Media Group|GMG]] |location=London |issn=0261-3077 |oclc=60623878 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121113140056/http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2006/oct/16/theatre.beckettat100 |archive-date= 13 November 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  The production ran for only nine performances, as part of the 50th-anniversary celebration season of the [[Royal Court Theatre]]; it sold out within minutes of the opening of the box office and tickets commanded large sums from [[ticket resale|ticket resellers]].<ref>Münder 220; cf. Fraser, ''Must You Go?'' 304 and 307.</ref>  One performance was filmed and broadcast on [[BBC Four]] on 21 June 2007, and also screened later, as part of the memorial PEN Tribute to Pinter, in New York, on 2 May 2009.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://web.gc.cuny.edu/mestc/events/s09/PEN_World_Voices.html |title=PEN World Voices Festival: Harold Pinter Memorial Celebration |work=Martin E. Segal Theatre Center |publisher=The City University of New York |year=2009 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110614060751/http://web.gc.cuny.edu/mestc/events/s09/PEN_World_Voices.html |archive-date= 14 June 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

In October and November 2006, [[Sheffield Theatres]] hosted [[Sheffield Theatres#Pinter: A Celebration|Pinter: A Celebration]]. It featured productions of seven of Pinter's plays: ''The Caretaker'', ''Voices'', ''No Man's Land'', ''Family Voices'', ''Tea Party'', ''The Room'', ''One for the Road'', and ''The Dumb Waiter''; and films (most his screenplays; some in which Pinter appears as an actor).<ref name=SheffieldNews>{{cite web |url=http://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.view&NewsID=222 |title=Pinter: A Celebration |work=sheffieldtheatres.co.uk |year=2011 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110716090843/http://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.view&NewsID=222 |archive-date=16 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

In February and March 2007, a 50th anniversary of ''The Dumb Waiter'', was produced at the [[Trafalgar Studios]].  Later in February 2007, [[John Crowley (director)|John Crowley]]'s film version of Pinter's play ''Celebration'' (2000) was shown on ''[[More4]]'' ([[Channel 4]], UK).  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).  A revival of ''The Hothouse'' opened at the National Theatre, in London, in July 2007, concurrently with a revival of ''Betrayal'' at the [[Donmar Warehouse]], directed by [[Roger Michell]].<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/mar/17/featuresreviews.guardianreview13 |title=Fathers and sons |first=Samuel |last=West |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=17 March 2007 |publisher=[[Guardian Media Group|GMG]] |location=London |issn=0261-3077 |oclc=60623878 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100411070458/http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/mar/17/featuresreviews.guardianreview13 |archive-date= 11 April 2010 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

[[File:No Mans Land Harold Pinter Duke of Yorks Theatre London.jpg|right|thumb|''[[No Man's Land (play)|No Man's Land]]'' revival at [[Duke of York's Theatre]], 30 December 2008]]
Revivals in 2008 included the 40th-anniversary production of the American première of ''The Homecoming'' on Broadway, directed by [[Daniel J. Sullivan]].<ref name=Upcomingevents>{{cite web|url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/calendar/index.shtml |title=Worldwide Calendar |editor=Batty, Mark |work=haroldpinter.org |year=2011 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110709085619/http://www.haroldpinter.org/calendar/index.shtml |archive-date= 9 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  From 8 to 24 May 2008, the [[Lyric Hammersmith]] celebrated the 50th anniversary of ''The Birthday Party'' with a revival and related events, including a gala performance and reception hosted by Harold Pinter on 19 May 2008, exactly 50 years after its London première there. The final revival during Pinter's lifetime was a production of ''No Man's Land'', directed by [[Rupert Goold]], opening at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in August 2008, and then transferring to the [[Duke of York's Theatre]], London, where it played until 3 January 2009.<ref name=BWW>{{cite web|url=http://westend.broadwayworld.com/article/Photo_Flash_NO_MANS_LAND_at_the_Duke_of_York_20000101 |title=Photo Flash: No Man's Land at the Duke of York |last=Staff |work=westend.broadwayworld.com |date=10 November 2008 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120117182820/http://westend.broadwayworld.com/article/Photo_Flash_NO_MANS_LAND_at_the_Duke_of_York_20000101 |archive-date= 17 January 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  On the Monday before Christmas 2008, Pinter was admitted to [[Hammersmith Hospital]], where he died on Christmas Eve from liver cancer, aged 78.<ref name=Goodnight>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2009/jan/01/pinter-theatre |title=Goodnight, sweet prince: Shakespearean farewell to Pinter |first=Michael |last=Billington |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=1 January 2009 |publisher=[[Guardian Media Group|GMG]] |location=London |issn=0261-3077 |oclc=60623878 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100326011045/http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/jan/01/pinter-theatre |archive-date= 26 March 2010 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

On 26 December 2008, when ''No Man's Land'' reopened at the Duke of York's, the actors paid tribute to Pinter from the stage, with Michael Gambon reading Hirst's monologue about his "photograph album" from Act Two that Pinter had asked him to read at his funeral, ending with a standing ovation from the audience, many of whom were in tears:
{{blockquote|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&nbsp;... trapped.  Bow to it.  It will assuredly never release them, but who knows&nbsp;... what relief&nbsp;... it may give them&nbsp;... who knows how they may quicken&nbsp;... in their chains, in their glass jars.  You think it cruel&nbsp;... to quicken them, when they are fixed, imprisoned? No&nbsp;... no.  Deeply, deeply, they wish to respond to your touch, to your look, and when you smile, their joy&nbsp;... 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.<ref name=Goodnight/><ref>Pinter, ''No Man's Land'', ''Four Plays'' 69–70.</ref><ref name=Tribute>{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7800829.stm |title=West End pays tribute to Pinter |last=Staff |work=[[BBC News]] |date=27 December 2008 |publisher=[[British Broadcasting Corporation|BBC]] |location=London |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131112044005/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7800829.stm |archive-date= 12 November 2013 |url-status=dead }}</ref>}}

==Posthumous events==
===Funeral===
[[File:Grave of Harold Pinter in Kensal Green Cemetery.jpg|thumb|upright|Grave of Harold Pinter in [[Kensal Green Cemetery]]]]
Pinter's funeral was a private, half-hour secular ceremony conducted at the graveside at [[Kensal Green Cemetery]], 31 December 2008. The eight readings selected in advance by Pinter included passages from seven of his own writings and from the story "[[The Dead (Joyce short story)|The Dead]]", by [[James Joyce]], which was read by actress [[Penelope Wilton]]. [[Michael Gambon]] read the "photo album" speech from ''No Man's Land'' and three other readings, including Pinter's poem "Death" (1997). Other readings honoured Pinter's widow and his love of cricket.<ref name=Goodnight/>  The ceremony was attended by many notable theatre people, including [[Tom Stoppard]], but not by Pinter's son, Daniel Brand. At its end, Pinter's widow, Antonia Fraser, stepped forward to his grave and quoted from [[Horatio (character)|Horatio]]'s speech after the death of [[Prince Hamlet|Hamlet]]: "Goodnight, sweet prince, / And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."<ref name=Goodnight/>

===Memorial tributes===
The night before Pinter's burial, theatre marquees on Broadway dimmed their lights for a minute in tribute,<ref name=Friends>{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts_and_culture/7805812.stm |title=Friends bid Pinter final farewell |last=Staff |work=[[BBC News]] |date=31 December 2008 |publisher=[[British Broadcasting Corporation|BBC]] |location=London |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120730042522/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/arts_and_culture/7805812.stm |archive-date= 30 July 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref> and on the final night of ''No Man's Land'' at the Duke of York's Theatre on 3 January 2009, all of the [[Ambassador Theatre Group]] in the West End dimmed their lights for an hour to honour the playwright.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/newsstory.php/22984/pinter-to-be-honoured-before-final |title=The Stage / News / Pinter to be honoured before final performance of No Man's Land |first=Alistair |last=Smith |work=thestage.co.uk |publisher=The Stage Newspaper Limited |location=London |date=2 January 2009 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110612044629/http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/newsstory.php/22984/pinter-to-be-honoured-before-final |archive-date= 12 June 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  <!-- Commented out as reference is no longer online and nor at Internet archive. The [[Sydney Festival]], Dublin's Gate Theatre, and the [[Sydney Theatre Company]], whose co-artistic directors are Australian actress [[Cate Blanchett]] and her husband, [[Andrew Upton]], on 1 February, gave a free, hour-long tribute performance of readings from Pinter's works.  It was directed and introduced by Colgan and featured Blanchett, fellow Australian actor Robert Menzies (grandson of former Australian Prime Minister [[Robert Menzies]]), and others.<ref name=McCallum>John McCallum, [http://arquivo.pt/wayback/20090629233230/http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24994048-16947,00.html "Companies Recall Good Ghost of Pinter"], ''[[The Australian|Australian]]'', [[News Limited]], 2 February 2009. Retrieved 14 April 2009.</ref> -->

[[Diane Abbott]], the [[Member of Parliament (UK)|Member of Parliament]] for [[Hackney North and Stoke Newington (UK Parliament constituency)|Hackney North & Stoke Newington]] proposed an [[early day motion]] in the [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|House of Commons]] to support a residents' campaign to restore the Clapton Cinematograph Theatre, established in [[Lower Clapton|Lower Clapton Road]] in 1910, and to turn it into a memorial to Pinter "to honour this Hackney boy turned literary great."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.dianeabbott.org.uk/news/press/news.aspx?p=102369 |title=Diane Abbott Calls for Pinter Cinema |work=dianeabbott.org.uk |year=2011 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110929013913/http://www.dianeabbott.org.uk/news/press/news.aspx?p=102369 |archive-date= 29 September 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  On 2 May 2009, a free public memorial tribute was held at [[CUNY Graduate Center|The Graduate Center]] of The [[City University of New York]].  It was part of the 5th Annual [[PEN World Voices|PEN World Voices Festival]] of International Literature, taking place in New York City.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/3239/prmID/1831 |title=PEN American Center – Tribute to Harold Pinter |work=pen.org |date=2 May 2009 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110714015021/http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/3239/prmID/1831 |archive-date= 14 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  Another memorial celebration, held in the Olivier Theatre, at the [[Royal National Theatre]], in London, on the evening of 7 June 2009, consisted of excerpts and readings from Pinter's writings by nearly three dozen actors, many of whom were his friends and associates, including: [[Eileen Atkins]], [[David Bradley (English actor)|David Bradley]], [[Colin Firth]], [[Henry Goodman]], [[Sheila Hancock]], [[Alan Rickman]], [[Penelope Wilton]], [[Susan Wooldridge]], and [[Henry Woolf]]; and a troupe of students from the [[London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art]], directed by Ian Rickson.<ref name="A Celebration">{{cite web|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qby7v |title=BBC Two Programmes – Arena, Harold Pinter – A Celebration |work=[[BBC]] |year=2009 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100121193519/http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qby7v |archive-date= 21 January 2010 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref name=Coveney>{{cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/harold-pinter-a-celebration-national-theatre-london-1700071.html |title=Harold Pinter: a celebration, National Theatre, London |first=Michael |last=Coveney |work=[[The Independent]] |date=9 June 2009 |publisher=[[Independent News & Media|INM]] |location=London |issn=0951-9467 |oclc=185201487 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110518090602/http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/harold-pinter-a-celebration-national-theatre-london-1700071.html |archive-date= 18 May 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

On 16 June 2009, Antonia Fraser officially opened a commemorative room at the [[Hackney Empire]]. The theatre also established a writer's residency in Pinter's name.<ref name=Jury>{{cite web|url=http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23708548-harold-pinter-honoured-by-hackney-empire.do |title=Harold Pinter honoured by Hackney Empire |first=Louise |last=Jury |work=thisislondon.co.uk |date=17 June 2009 |publisher=ES London Limited |location=London |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110606080711/http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23708548-harold-pinter-honoured-by-hackney-empire.do |archive-date= 6 June 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  Most of issue number 28 of [[Craig Raine]]'s Arts Tri-Quarterly ''[[Areté]]'' was devoted to pieces remembering Pinter, beginning with Pinter's 1987 unpublished love poem dedicated "To Antonia" and his poem "Paris", written in 1975 (the year in which he and Fraser began living together), followed by brief memoirs by some of Pinter's associates and friends, including [[Patrick Marber]], [[Nina Raine]], [[Tom Stoppard]], [[Peter Nichols (playwright)|Peter Nichols]], [[Susanna Gross]], [[Richard Eyre]], and David Hare.<ref>''[[Areté]]'' 28 (Spring/Summer 2009): 17–89.  {{ISBN|978-0-9554553-8-4}}.</ref>

A memorial cricket match at [[Lord's Cricket Ground]] between the Gaieties Cricket Club and the Lord's Taverners, followed by performances of Pinter's poems and excerpts from his plays, took place on 27 September 2009.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/6255151/Lords-tribute-was-celebration-of-Harold-Pinters-two-great-loves-cricket-and-literature.html |title=Lord's tribute was celebration of Harold Pinter's two great loves: cricket and literature – Telegraph |first=Ed |last=Smith |work=[[The Daily Telegraph]] |date=2 October 2009 |location=London |issn=0307-1235 |oclc=49632006 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110519171448/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/6255151/Lords-tribute-was-celebration-of-Harold-Pinters-two-great-loves-cricket-and-literature.html |archive-date= 19 May 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

In 2009, [[English PEN]] established the [[PEN/Pinter Prize|PEN Pinter Prize]], which is awarded annually to a British writer or a writer resident in Britain who, in the words of Pinter's Nobel speech, casts an 'unflinching, unswerving' gaze upon the world, and shows a 'fierce intellectual determination&nbsp;... to define the real truth of our lives and our societies'.  The prize is shared with an international writer of courage.  The inaugural winners of the prize were [[Tony Harrison]] and the Burmese poet and comedian [[Zarganar|Maung Thura (a.k.a. Zarganar)]].<ref>English PEN website http://www.englishpen.org/prizes/pen-pinter-prize/</ref>

===''Being Harold Pinter''===
In January 2011 ''Being Harold Pinter'', a theatrical collage of excerpts from Pinter's dramatic works, his Nobel Lecture, and letters of Belarusian prisoners, created and performed by the [[Belarus Free Theatre]], evoked a great deal of attention in the [[public media]].  The Free Theatre's members had to be smuggled out of [[Minsk]], owing to a government crackdown on dissident artists, to perform their production in a two-week sold-out engagement at [[La MaMa]] in New York as part of the 2011 [[Under the Radar Festival]]. In an additional sold-out benefit performance at the [[Public Theater]], co-hosted by playwrights [[Tony Kushner]] and [[Tom Stoppard]], the prisoner's letters were read by ten guest performers: [[Mandy Patinkin]], [[Kevin Kline]], [[Olympia Dukakis]], [[Lily Rabe]], [[Linda Emond]], [[Josh Hamilton (actor)|Josh Hamilton]], [[Stephen Spinella]], [[Lou Reed]], [[Laurie Anderson]], and [[Philip Seymour Hoffman]].<ref name=BFT>{{cite web|url=http://broadwayworld.com/article/Kline_Hoffman_et_al_Lend_Support_to_Belarus_Free_Theater_with_BEING_HAROLD_PINTER_Benefit_at_The_Public_Tonight_117_20110117 |title=Kline, Hoffman et al. Lend Support to Belarus Free Theater with 'Being Harold Pinter' Benefit at The Public Tonight, 1/17 |work=broadwayworld.com |date=17 January 2011 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120505094146/http://broadwayworld.com/article/Kline_Hoffman_et_al_Lend_Support_to_Belarus_Free_Theater_with_BEING_HAROLD_PINTER_Benefit_at_The_Public_Tonight_117_20110117 |archive-date= 5 May 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  In solidarity with the Belarus Free Theatre, collaborations of actors and theatre companies joined in offering additional benefit readings of ''Being Harold Pinter'' across the United States.<ref name=Gunderson>{{cite web|url=https://huffingtonpost.com/lauren-gunderson/countrywide-free-theatre-_b_809947.html |title=Countrywide, Free Theatre Stands up to Dictators |first=Lauren |last=Gunderson |work=huffingtonpost.com |date=19 January 2011 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110402215205/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lauren-gunderson/countrywide-free-theatre-_b_809947.html |archive-date= 2 April 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

===The Harold Pinter Theatre, London===
In September 2011, British Theatre owners, [[Ambassador Theatre Group]] (ATG) announced it was renaming its ''Comedy Theatre'', Panton Street, London to become ''The [[Harold Pinter Theatre]]''. [[Howard Panter]], Joint CEO and Creative Director of ATG told the [[BBC]], "The work of Pinter has become an integral part of the history of the Comedy Theatre. The re-naming of one of our most successful West End theatres is a fitting tribute to a man who made such a mark on British theatre who, over his 50 year career, became recognised as one of the most influential modern British dramatists."<ref>{{cite news|title=Harold Pinter has London theatre named after him|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-14827867|access-date=8 September 2011|work=BBC News|date=7 September 2011|publisher=BBC|location=London}}</ref>

==Honours==
{{Further|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|Modern Language Association of America]] (1970),<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.mla.org/honfell_past |title=Past Honorary Fellows |work=Modern Language Association |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081204143428/http://www.mla.org/honfell_past |archive-date= 4 December 2008 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/biography/index.shtml |title=Biography |editor=Batty, Mark |work=haroldpinter.org |year=2011 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110709085705/http://www.haroldpinter.org/biography/index.shtml |archive-date= 9 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Pinter was appointed [[Order of the British Empire|CBE]] in 1966<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/44004/supplements/6539 |title=Supplement to The London Gazette, 11th June 1966 |journal=[[London Gazette]] |publisher=[[Government of the United Kingdom]] |date=11 June 1996 |access-date=29 June 2011 |issue=44004 |page=6539 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111019015146/http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/44004/supplements/6539 |archive-date= 19 October 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref> and became a [[Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour]] in 2002, having declined a knighthood in 1996.<ref name=White>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/jun/15/arts.politics |title=Arise Sir Mick, but Pinter takes surprise top honour |first=Michael |last=White |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=15 June 2002 |publisher=[[Guardian Media Group|GMG]] |location=London |issn=0261-3077 |oclc=60623878 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121113031402/http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/jun/15/arts.politics |archive-date= 13 November 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref> In 1995, he accepted the [[David Cohen Prize]], in recognition of a lifetime of literary achievement. In 1996, he received  a [[Laurence Olivier Awards|Laurence Olivier Special Award]] for lifetime achievement in the theatre.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk/olivier_awards/past_winners/view/item98530/Olivier-Winners-1996/ |title=Olivier Winners 1996 |work=The Official London Theatre Guide |date=24 April 2008 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110515145552/http://www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk/olivier_awards/past_winners/view/item98530/Olivier-Winners-1996/ |archive-date= 15 May 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref> In 1997 he became a [[British Academy of Film and Television Arts|BAFTA]] Fellow.<ref name=BAFTAawards>{{cite web |url=http://www.bafta.org/awards/academy-fellows,125,BA.html |title=Academy Fellows |work=bafta.org |year=2011 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110525123941/http://www.bafta.org/awards/academy-fellows,125,BA.html |archive-date=25 May 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref> He received the World Leaders Award for "Creative Genius" as the subject of a week-long "Homage" in Toronto, in October 2001.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/09/travel/travel-advisory-toronto-festival-honors-14-leaders-in-the-arts.html |title=Travel Advisory: Toronto Festival Honors 14 Leaders in the Arts |last=Staff |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=9 September 2001 |location=New York City |issn=0362-4331 |access-date=3 July 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110703234324/http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/09/travel/travel-advisory-toronto-festival-honors-14-leaders-in-the-arts.html |archive-date= 3 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>  In 2004, he received the [[Wilfred Owen]] Award for Poetry for his "lifelong contribution to literature, 'and specifically for his collection of poetry entitled ''War'', published in 2003'".<ref name=GuardianWOAPA>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/aug/04/iraq.books |title=Pinter awarded Wilfred Owen prize for poetry opposing Iraq conflict |first=John |last=Ezard |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=4 August 2004 |publisher=[[Guardian Media Group|GMG]] |location=London |issn=0261-3077 |oclc=60623878 |access-date=3 July 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110323212608/http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/aug/04/iraq.books |archive-date= 23 March 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref> In March 2006, he was awarded the [[Europe Theatre Prize]] in recognition of lifetime achievements pertaining to drama and theatre.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.premio-europa.org/open_page.php?id=319 |title=Europe Theatre Prize – X Edition – pinter_motivazioni |work=premio-europa.org |year=2006 |access-date=29 June 2011 |language=it, en |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727184239/http://www.premio-europa.org/open_page.php?id=319 |archive-date= 27 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref> In conjunction with that award, the critic Michael Billington coordinated an international conference on Pinter: Passion, Poetry, Politics, including scholars and critics from Europe and the Americas, held in [[Turin]], Italy, from 10 to 14 March 2006.<ref name=BillingtonETP/><ref name=ETPEvent/><ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 427–28.</ref>

In October 2008, the [[Central School of Speech and Drama]] announced that Pinter had agreed to become its president and awarded him an [[Honorary title (academic)|honorary fellowship]] at its graduation ceremony.<ref name=Central2008>{{cite web|url=http://www.cssd.ac.uk/content/obituaries#harold |title=Obituaries: Harold Pinter – 1930–2008 |work=[[Central School of Speech and Drama]] |year=2011 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110520165624/http://www.cssd.ac.uk/content/obituaries |archive-date= 20 May 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref> 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."<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/newsstory.php/22095/pinter-replaces-mandelson-as-central |title=The Stage / News / Pinter replaces Mandelson as Central president |first=Alistair |last=Smith |work=thestage.co.uk |publisher=The Stage Newspaper Limited |date=14 October 2008 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110716014556/http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/newsstory.php/22095/pinter-replaces-mandelson-as-central |archive-date= 16 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref> But he had to receive that honorary degree, his 20th, in absentia owing to ill health.<ref name=Central2008/>  His presidency of the school was brief; he died just two weeks after the graduation ceremony, on 24 December 2008.

In 2013, he was posthumously awarded the [[Sretenje Order]] of [[Serbia]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=Укази о одликовањима|url=https://www.predsednik.rs/predsednik/ukazi-o-odlikovanjima|access-date=2021-01-27|website=Председник Републике Србије}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Nikolić odlikovao strane državnike i zaslužne pojedince|url=https://www.kurir.rs/vesti/drustvo/655721/nikolic-odlikovao-strane-drzavnike-i-zasluzne-pojedince|access-date=2021-01-27|website=kurir.rs|language=sr}}</ref>

===Nobel Prize in Literature===
{{main|2005 Nobel Prize in Literature}}

===Légion d'honneur===
On 18 January 2007, French Prime Minister [[Dominique de Villepin]] presented Pinter with France's highest civil honour, the [[Légion d'honneur]], at a ceremony at the French embassy in London.  De Villepin praised Pinter's poem "American Football" (1991) stating: "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 response, Pinter praised France's 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".<ref name=FE>{{cite web|url=http://www.ambafrance-uk.org/Legion-d-honneur-for-Harold-Pinter.html |title=Légion d'Honneur for Harold Pinter |last=France in the United Kingdom |work=French Embassy in the UK |date=17 January 2007 |access-date=26 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110717003151/http://www.ambafrance-uk.org/Legion-d-honneur-for-Harold-Pinter.html |archive-date= 17 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6273365.stm |title=French PM honours Harold Pinter |last=Staff |work=[[BBC News]] |date=18 January 2007 |publisher=[[British Broadcasting Corporation|BBC]] |location=London |access-date=26 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110813095244/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6273365.stm |archive-date= 13 August 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref> 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".<ref name=FE/>

==Scholarly response==
{{Main|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"<ref>Merritt, ''Pinter in Play'' 171–89.</ref> or dissent from his retrospective viewpoints on his own work.<ref>Begley; Karwowski; and Quigley.</ref> In 1985, Pinter recalled that his early act of conscientious objection resulted from being "terribly disturbed as a young man by the Cold War. And McCarthyism&nbsp;... 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 that we have an obligation to subject our own actions and attitudes to an equivalent critical and moral scrutiny."<ref>Quoted in Merritt, ''Pinter in Play'' 178.</ref> Scholars agree that Pinter's dramatic rendering of power relations results from this scrutiny.<ref name=BattyGrimes2>[[Cf.]], e.g., Batty, "Preface" (xvii–xix) and chap. 6–9 (55–221) in ''About Pinter''; Grimes 19, 36–71, 218–20, and ''passim''.</ref>

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 after him, "Stan, don't let them tell you what to do!"  Pinter told Gussow in 1988, "I've lived that line all my damn life. Never more than now."<ref name=GussowConv>Quoted in Merritt, ''Pinter in Play'' 179.</ref> The example of Pinter's stalwart opposition to what he termed "the modes of thinking of those in power"—the "brick wall" of the "minds" perpetuating the "status quo"<ref>Merritt, ''Pinter in Play'' 180.</ref>—infused the "vast political pessimism" that some academic critics may perceive in his artistic work,<ref>Grimes 220.</ref> its "drowning landscape" of harsh contemporary realities, with some residual "hope for restoring the dignity of man."<ref>Pinter, ''Art, Truth and Politics'' 9 and 24.</ref>

As Pinter's long-time friend David Jones reminded analytically inclined scholars and dramatic critics, Pinter was one of the "great comic writers":<ref>{{cite book|url= http://cco.cambridge.org/extract?id=ccol0521651239_CCOL0521651239A006 |title=Cambridge Collections Online : The sacred joke: Comedy and politics in Pinter's early plays |first=Francesca |last=Coppa |author-link=Francesca Coppa |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2011 |isbn=978-0-521-65842-3 |editor=Raby, Peter |url-access=subscription |access-date=30 June 2011 |page=45}}</ref>{{blockquote|The trap with Harold's work, for performers and audiences, is to approach it too earnestly or portentously. I have always tried to interpret his plays with as much humour and humanity as possible. There is always mischief lurking in the darkest corners. The world of ''The Caretaker'' is a bleak one, its characters damaged and lonely. But they are all going to survive. And in their dance to that end they show a frenetic vitality and a wry sense of the ridiculous that balance heartache and laughter. Funny, but not too funny. As Pinter wrote, back in 1960: "As far as I am concerned ''The Caretaker'' IS funny, up to a point. Beyond that point, it ceases to be funny, and it is because of that point that I wrote it."<ref name=JonesWoolf>{{cite web|url=http://roundabouttheatre.org/fc/fall03/jones.htm |title=Roundabout Theatre Company – Front & Center Online |first=David |last=Jones |work=roundabouttheatre.org |date=Fall 2003 |access-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727223238/http://roundabouttheatre.org/fc/fall03/jones.htm |archive-date= 27 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}; [[cf.]] Woolf, quoted in Merritt, "Talking about Pinter" 147–48.</ref>}}  His dramatic conflicts present serious implications for his characters and his audiences, leading to sustained inquiry about "the point" of his work and multiple "critical strategies" for developing interpretations and stylistic analyses of it.<ref>Merritt, ''Pinter in Play'' (''passim'').</ref>

==Pinter research collections==
{{Further|Harold Pinter Archive}}
Pinter's unpublished manuscripts and letters to and from him are held in the Harold Pinter Archive in the Modern Literary Manuscripts division of the [[British Library]].  Smaller collections of Pinter manuscripts are in the [[Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center]], the [[University of Texas at Austin]];<ref name=RansomColl/> [[Indiana University (Bloomington)|The Lilly Library]], [[Indiana University (Bloomington)|Indiana University at Bloomington]]; the Mandeville Special Collections Library, Geisel Library, at the [[University of California, San Diego]]; the [[British Film Institute]], in London; and the Margaret Herrick Library, [[Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study]], the [[Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences]], [[Beverly Hills, California]].<ref>Baker and Ross, "Appendix One" 224.</ref><ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.haroldpinter.org/links/links_academia.shtml |title=Links – Libraries and Academia |editor=Batty, Mark|work=haroldpinter.org |year=2011 |access-date=29 June 2011 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20081228191355/http://www.haroldpinter.org/links/links_academia.shtml | archive-date = 28 December 2008}}</ref>

==List of works and bibliography==
{{Further|List of works by Harold Pinter}}
{{Further|Harold Pinter bibliography}}

==See also==
*[[Independent Jewish Voices]]
*[[International PEN]]
*[[PEN Pinter Prize]]
*[[Jewish left]]
*[[List of Jewish Nobel laureates]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

===Works cited===
{{Refbegin}}
*{{cite book|last=Baker |first=William |title=Harold Pinter|url=https://archive.org/details/haroldpinter0000bake |url-access=registration |series= Writers' Lives Series.  |location=London and New York|publisher=[[Continuum International Publishing Group]]|year=2008 |isbn=978-0-8264-9970-7}}
*{{cite book|last1=Baker|first1=William|last2=Ross|first2=John C.|title=Harold Pinter: A Bibliographical History|location=London|publisher=[[British Library]] and New Castle, DE|year=2005|isbn=1-58456-156-4|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/trent_0116405528849}}
*{{cite book|last=Batty |first=Mark |title=About Pinter: The Playwright and the Work |location=  London |publisher=[[Faber and Faber]] |year=2005 |isbn= 0-571-22005-3}}
*{{cite book| last=Begley |first=Varun |title=Harold Pinter and the Twilight of Modernism |location=  Toronto |publisher= University of Toronto Press |year=2005 |isbn= 978-0-8020-3887-6}}
*{{cite book |author-link=Michael Billington (critic) |last=Billington |first=Michael |title=Harold Pinter |location=London |publisher=[[Faber and Faber]] |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-571-19065-2 |url=https://archive.org/details/lifeworkofharo00bill }}
*{{cite book|author-link=Antonia Fraser|last=Fraser |first=Antonia |title=Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter |location= London |publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson (Orion Books)|isbn=978-0-297-85971-0|year=2010}}
*{{cite book |last=Gale |first=Steven H. |title=Sharp Cut: Harold Pinter's Screenplays and the Artistic Process |location=Lexington |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |year=2003 |isbn=0-8131-2244-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/sharpcutharoldpi0000gale }}
*{{cite book|editor=Gordon, Lois |title=Pinter at 70: A Casebook| series=Casebooks on Modern Dramatists |year=2001|edition=2 |location=New York and London |publisher=Routledge |isbn= 978-0-415-93630-9}}
*{{cite book|last=Grimes |first=Charles |title=Harold Pinter's Politics: A Silence Beyond Echo |location=  Madison & Teaneck, NJ |publisher= Fairleigh Dickinson University Press |year=2005 |isbn=0-8386-4050-8}}
*{{cite book|author-link=Mel Gussow |last=Gussow |first=Mel |title=Conversations with Pinter |location= London |publisher=[[Nick Hern Books]]| year=1994 |isbn= 978-1-85459-201-9}}
*{{cite book |last1=Hern |first1=Nicholas |last2=Pinter | first2=Harold |title=A Play and Its Politics: A Conversation between Harold Pinter and Nicholas Hern |date=February 1985| pages=5–23 |series=Harold Pinter, 'One for the Road'| location=New York |publisher=Grove |isbn= 0-394-62363-0}}
*{{cite journal|last=Hudgins |first=Christopher C. |title=Three Unpublished Harold Pinter Filmscripts |journal=The Pinter Review: Nobel Prize/Europe Theatre Prize Volume: 2005–2008 |editor= Gillen, Francis |editor2=Gale, Steven H. |location=Tampa |publisher=University of Tampa Press |year=2008 |pages=132–39|oclc=16878624|issn=0895-9706}}
*{{cite journal|last=Karwowski |first=Michael |url=http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-111858203.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090112100320/http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-111858203.html |archive-date=12 January 2009 |title=Harold Pinter––a Political Playwright?]|journal=[[The Contemporary Review]]|date=1 November 2003 |pages=291–96|url-access=subscription |location=Oxford |issn=0010-7565 |oclc= 1564974 }}
*{{cite book |last=Merritt |first=Susan Hollis |title=Pinter in Play: Critical Strategies and the Plays of Harold Pinter |year=1995 |location=Durham and London |publisher=Duke University Press |isbn=978-0-8223-1674-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/pinterinplay00susa }}
*{{cite journal|last=Merritt |first=Susan Hollis |title=Harold Pinter's 'Ashes to Ashes': Political/Personal Echoes of the Holocaust |journal=The Pinter Review: Collected Essays 1999 and 2000 |editor=Gillen, Francis |editor2=Gale, Steven H. |location=Tampa |publisher=University of Tampa Press|year= 2000 |pages= 73–84|oclc=16878624|issn=0895-9706}}
*{{cite journal|last=Merritt |first=Susan Hollis |title=Talking about Pinter: Collected Essays 2001 and 2002|journal= The Pinter Review: Collected Essays: 2003 and 2004|editor=  Gillen, Francis |editor2=Gale, Steven H. |location=Tampa |publisher=University of Tampa Press |year=2002 |pages=144–467|oclc=16878624|issn=0895-9706}}
*{{cite journal|last=Merritt |first=Susan Hollis |title=Staging Pinter: From Pregnant Pauses to Political Cause|journal=The Pinter Review: Collected Essays: 2003 and 2004|editor=  Gillen, Francis |editor2=Gale, Steven H. |location=Tampa |publisher=University of Tampa Press |year=2004 |pages=123–43|oclc=16878624|issn=0895-9706}}
*{{cite journal|last=Münder |first=Peter |title=Endgame with Spools: Harold Pinter in 'Krapp's Last Tape'|journal=The Pinter Review: Nobel Prize/Europe Theatre Prize Volume: 2005– 008 |editor= Gillen, Francis |editor2=Gale, Steven H. |location=Tampa |publisher=University of Tampa Press |year=2008|pages=220–22|oclc=16878624|issn=0895-9706}}
*{{cite book|last=Pinter |first=Harold |title='Celebration' and 'The Room': Two Plays by Harold Pinter |location=London |publisher=[[Faber and Faber]] |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-571-20497-7}}
*{{cite book|last=Pinter |first=Harold |title=Art, Truth and Politics: The Nobel Lecture |location=  London |publisher=[[Faber and Faber]] |year=2005 |isbn=978-0-571-23396-0}}
*{{cite book|last=Pinter |first=Harold |chapter=Introduction by Harold Pinter, Nobel Laureate|pages =7–9 |title=Fortune's Fool: The Man Who Taught Harold Pinter: A Life of Joe Brearley |editor=Watkins, G. L. |location=Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, UK |publisher=TwigBooks in association with The Clove Club |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-9547236-8-2}}
*{{cite book|last=Pinter |first=Harold |title=Various Voices: Sixty Years of Prose, Poetry, Politics 1948–2008 |edition=3 |location=  London |publisher= [[Faber and Faber]] |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-571-24480-5}}
*{{cite book|last=Quigley |first=Austin E. |chapter-url=  http://cco.cambridge.org/extract?id=ccol0521651239_CCOL0521651239_root |title=The Cambridge Companion to Harold Pinter |editor=Raby, Peter |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2001 |pages=7–27 |isbn= 978-0-521-65842-3 |chapter=Pinter, Politics and Postmodernmism (I)|chapter-url-access=subscription }}
*{{cite journal|editor=Watkins, G. L. |journal=The Clove's Lines: The Newsletter of the Clove Club: The Old Boys of Hackney Downs School|volume= 3 | issue= 2 |date = March 2009|pages=1–36}}
{{Refend}}

== Further reading ==

=== Editions ===
*Pinter, Harold. ''Plays: One'' | ''[[The Birthday Party (play)|The Birthday Party]], The Room, The Dumb Waiter, [[A Slight Ache]], The Hothouse, A Night Out''. (London: Methuen, 1983) {{ISBN|0-413-34650-1}} Contains an introductory essay, ''Writing for the Theatre''.
*Pinter, Harold. ''Plays: Two'' | ''[[The Caretaker]], The Collection, The Lover, Night School, The Dwarfs''. (London: Eyre Methuen, 1979) {{ISBN|0-413-37300-2}} Contains an introductory essay, ''Writing for Myself''.
*Pinter, Harold. ''Plays: Three'' | ''[[The Homecoming]], The Tea Party, The Basement, Landscape, Silence''. (London: Eyre Methuen, 1978) {{ISBN|0-413-38480-2}}

=== Works of criticism ===
*Naismith, Bill (ed.), ''Harold Pinter: Faber Critical Guide: [[The Caretaker]], [[The Birthday Party (play)|The Birthday Party]], [[The Homecoming]]'' (London: [[Faber and Faber]], 2000). {{ISBN|978-0-571-19781-1}}. Contains introductory essays and explanatory notes.

== External links ==
{{Wikiquote}}
{{Commons category|Harold Pinter}}
* {{Official website|http://www.haroldpinter.org/home/index.shtml}}{{bots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}}
* {{OL author}}
* {{IMDb name|name=Harold Pinter|id=0056217}}
* {{IBDB name}}
* [http://www.pintersociety.org/ International Harold Pinter Society] (Allied Organization of the [[Modern Language Association]], co-publisher of ''The Pinter Review'')
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20090113201353/http://www.granta.com/Online-Only/Harold-Pinter-tribute "Harold Pinter"] at [[Granta]] (collection of useful links)
* [https://www.theguardian.com/culture/pinter "Harold Pinter"] at ''[[guardian.co.uk]]'' ("The best of The Guardian's coverage, including tributes, reviews and articles from the archive," periodically updated)
* [http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/harold_pinter/index.html "Harold Pinter"] in "Times Topics" at ''[[The New York Times|nytimes.com]]'' (periodically updated collection of news articles, reviews, commentaries, photographs, and Web resources from ''The New York Times'' )
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20070517131233/http://www.theatrevoice.com/listen_now/player/?audioID=463 "Harold Pinter"] on ''The Mark Shenton Show'', ''TheatreVoice'', recorded on 21 February 2007 (critics Michael Billington and Alastair Macaulay review ''[[Pinter's People]]'' and ''[[The Dumb Waiter]]''; director and actor Harry Burton talks about his experiences with Pinter)
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20070517131244/http://www.theatrevoice.com/listen_now/player/?audioID=352 "Reputations: Harold Pinter"] on ''TheatreVoice'', recorded on 14 October 2005 (critical assessments by Michael Billington, Dan Rebellato, [[Charles Spencer (journalist)|Charles Spencer]] and Ian Smith)
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110926093110/http://www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk/filmstobuy/category/6/product/280/working_with_pinter.html Working with Pinter, 2007 film by Harry Burton]
* [http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/whatson/downloads/index.html "Harold Pinter – Interview"], ''[[British Library]] Online Gallery: What's On'', British Library, 8 September 2008 (Pinter discusses his memories of postwar British theatre with Harry Burton)
* [https://nobel.bh.org.il/en/persona/2620/ Harold Pinter], Nobel Luminaries – Jewish Nobel Prize Winners, on the [https://www.bh.org.il/ Beit Hatfutsot-The Museum of the Jewish People] Website.
* {{Nobelprize}}
*[http://noblib.internet-box.ch/NLEW.php?authorid=120 List of Works]

{{Pinter}}
{{Navboxes
| title = [[Honours and awards to Harold Pinter|Awards for Harold Pinter]]
| list =
{{Austrian State Prize for European Literature}}
{{BAFTA Award for Best British Screenplay}}
{{BAFTA Award for Best Screenplay}}
{{BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award}}
{{David Cohen Prize}}
{{New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Screenplay}}
{{2005 Nobel Prize winners}}
{{Nobel Prize in Literature Laureates 2001-2025}}
{{OlivierAward SpecialAward}}
}}
{{Angry young men}}

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{{featured article}}

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