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Harold Pinter

File:Harold_Pinter_1962.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

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Harold Pinter

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British playwright (1930–2008)

AI overview

Harold Pinter was a British playwright whose works, written between the 1950s and 2000s, are known for their distinctive style featuring pauses, silences, and ambiguous dialogue that create psychological tension. His innovative approach to drama significantly influenced modern theater and earned him international recognition, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005.

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Person · Open Library

Born
10 October 1930
Died
24 December 2008
Works
391

Top works

  • Essencial
  • Die Heimkehr
  • The caretaker
  • Other places
  • O monta-cargas

via Open Library + Wikidata

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners
298
Total plays
1,724

Similar artists

Harriet WalterSamuel BeckettMissa LubaJames JoyceTom Stoppard

Harold Pinter, the 2005 Nobel Laureate for Literature, was born October 10, 1930, in London's working-class Hackney district to Hyman and Frances Pinter, Eastern European Jews who had immigrated to the United Kingdom from Portugal. Hyman (known as "Jack") was a tailor specializing in women's clothing and Frances was a homemaker. The Pinters, whose families hailed from Odessa and Poland in the Russian Empire, were part of a wave of Jewish emigration to the UK at the turn of the last century. <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Harold+Pinter">Read more on Last.fm</a>

via Last.fm · Harold Pinter

Quotes

  • If only I could get down to Sidcup! I've been waiting for the weather to break. He's got my papers, this man I left them with, it's got it all down there, I could prove everything.
  • Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?
  • The weasel under the cocktail cabinet.
  • I tend to believe that cricket is the greatest thing that God ever created on earth. [...] Certainly greater than sex, although sex isn't too bad either.
  • I suggest that US foreign policy can still be defined as "kiss my ass or I'll kick your head in." But of course it doesn't put it like that. It talks of "low intensity conflict..." What all this adds up to is a disease at the very centre of language, so that language becomes a permanent masquerade, a tapestry of lies.
  • Praise the Lord for all good things. We blew their balls into shards of dust,Into shards of fucking dust. We did it. Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth.

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Wikidata facts

Official website
www.haroldpinter.org
Image
Harold Pinter 1962.jpg
Show 9 more facts
date of birth
1930-10-10
date of death
2008-12-24
Commons category
Harold Pinter
name in native language
Harold Pinter
pseudonym
David Baron
start of work period
1947-00-00
end of work period
2003-00-00
P12749
Dmitrov
Sources (14)

via Wikidata · CC0

~40 min read

Article

Harold Pinter (/ˈpɪntər/; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A 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 (1957), The Homecoming (1964) and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1971), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Trial (1993) and Sleuth (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television and film productions of his own and others' works.

Pinter was born in Hackney, east London, and educated at Hackney Downs School. He was a sprinter and 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 Lady Antonia Fraser in 1980.

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