SHAIJU

British playwright Harold Pinter is announced as the winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Harold Pinter

Early life and career
Pinter was born in Hackney in London to working class Jewish parents and educated at Hackney Downs Grammar school and, briefly, at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). He published poetry as a young man, and began working in the theatre as an actor, under the stage name David Baron. His first play, The Room, was first performed by Bristol University students in 1957.

The Birthday Party (1958) was initially a flop, despite a positive review in the Sunday Times by leading theatre critic Harold Hobson, but following the success of The Caretaker in 1960, which established him, it was revived, and this time was well received. These plays, and other early works such as The Homecoming (1964), have sometimes been labelled as displaying the "comedy of menace". They often take an apparently innocent situation, and turn it into a threatening and absurd one by means of characters acting in ways which seem inexplicable both to the audience and, sometimes, to other characters. This style has inspired the adjective "Pinteresque". Pinter's work was marked by the influence of Samuel Beckett from the earliest works onwards, and the two men became long-standing friends.


New directions
Pinter began to direct more frequently during the 1970s, becoming an associate director of the National Theatre in 1973. His later plays tend to be shorter, and on subjects which might be thought of as more political, often appearing to be allegories on oppression. It was around the 1970s that Pinter began to be more vocal on political matters, taking a distinctly left-wing stance. He continually strives to bring human rights violations and oppression to the public's attention. Letters from Pinter often appear in Britain's newspapers, such as The Guardian and The Independent.

In 1985 Pinter travelled to Turkey with the American playwright Arthur Miller and met many victims of political oppression there. At an American embassy function honouring Miller, instead of exchanging pleasantries, Pinter spoke of people having an electric current applied to their genitals—which got him thrown out. (Miller, in support, left the embassy with him.) Pinter's experience of oppression in Turkey and the suppression of the Kurdish language inspired his 1988 play Mountain Language.

Pinter opposed the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 Invasion of Iraq. In 2005 he announced that he was retiring from writing plays to dedicate himself to political campaigning. Pinter is an avowed critic of the Iraq war and famously called President Bush a mass murderer and Blair a deluded idiot. He has likened the Bush administration to Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, saying the U.S. was charging towards world domination while the American public and Britain's "mass-murdering" prime minister sat back and watched. [1]

Pinter is also an active delegate of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, an organization that supports Fidel Castro's regime on Cuba and campaigns against the U.S. embargo on the country, and a member of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic, an organization that appeals for the freedom of Slobodan Milosevic.

Pinter was appointed CBE in 1966 and became a Companion of Honour in 2002, having previously declined a knighthood. He is a supporter of the RESPECT coalition.

On October 13, 2005 the Swedish Academy announced Pinter was the recipient of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature, stating that, "in his plays [he] uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms".


Film work
Pinter's first screenplay, The Servant, was written in 1962. He later wrote scripts for The Go-Between and John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman, among others. He also published a screenplay based on Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, but this has never been filmed. Several of Pinter's plays have also been adapted for the cinema: The Caretaker (1963), The Birthday Party (1968), The Homecoming (1973) and Betrayal (1983). He has been nominated for an Oscar for best adapted screenplay twice ("The French Lieutenant's Woman" -- 1981; "Betrayal" -- 1983.)


Personal life
In 1977, Pinter caused a public scandal by leaving his wife, the troubled actress Vivien Merchant whom he had married in 1956 and who still loved him, for Lady Antonia Fraser, the eldest daughter of the 7th Earl of Longford and a Roman Catholic, whom he eventually married in 1980 after his divorce. Merchant died in 1982. His play Betrayal (1978) is sometimes claimed as a depiction of this liaison, but is actually based on an earlier seven-year affair Pinter had with Joan Bakewell, the television presenter.

Subsequently, he had a public falling out with theatre director Peter Hall over the depiction of a frequently drunk Pinter in Hall's Diaries published in 1983, though the two men returned to friendly terms later.

Once a heavy smoker, Pinter underwent chemotherapy for esophageal cancer in 2002, and has been in frail health since.

Pinter is a great fan of cricket and is the chairman of the Gaieties Cricket Club. He is also an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society.