FILE: The Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter has died, aged 78, his second wife, Lady Antonia Fraser, said on December 25

Record ID: 726037

  • Title: FILE: The Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter has died, aged 78, his second wife, Lady Antonia Fraser, said on December 25
  • Date: 26th December 2008
  • Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (FILE - OCTOBER 13, 2005) (REUTERS) HAROLD PINTER (WEARING FLAT CAP AND WITH PLASTER ON HEAD -LOOKING FRAIL) WITH WALKING STICK, STANDING OUTSIDE HIS HOME IN LONDON PRESS PHOTOGRAPHER (SOUNDBITE) (English) HAROLD PINTER SAYING: "I feel quite overwhelmed. I had absolutely no idea until 11:45 this morning and I was really quite taken aback. I haven't had time to think about it but I am very, very moved. It was something I did not expect at all at anytime. I was speechless" (when I got the call). I remain so. But I'll have to stop being speechless when I get to Stockholm apparently, because I have to make a speech."
  • Embargoed: 10th January 2009 12:00
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  • Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment / Showbiz
  • Reuters ID: LVA9MGTLN9GPSO8L8YWO6AXMIO9N
  • Story Text: British playwright and Nobel laureate Harold Pinter, famous for his brooding, unforgiving portrayals of domestic life, has died aged 78, British media reported on Thursday (December 25).
    Pinter, who had been suffering from cancer, died on Wednesday (December 24).
    He was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 2005 with his works, including the plays "The Birthday Party" and "The Homecoming", regarded by critics as among the finest produced in the last half century.
    Pinter's second wife, Lady Antonia Fraser, told the Guardian newspaper he was "a great".

    "It was a privilege to live with him for over 33 years. He will never be forgotten," she said.
    Pinter was born in Hackney in 1930, the only son of immigrant Jews.
    His childhood was interrupted by the outbreak of the war in 1939 when he was evacuated from his Hackney home to rural Cornwall.
    He was 14 before he returned to the capital, by which point he had developed a love of the works of Franz Kafka and Ernest Hemingway.
    As a young man he appeared in several school productions at Hackney Downs Grammar and later accepted a grant to study at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.
    In 1949 he was fined by magistrates for refusing to complete his National Service.
    Pinter was a politically conscious man who turned down John Major's offer of a knighthood and hit out at Tony Blair when Nato bombed Serbia.
    He labelled the invasion of Iraq as "a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the conception of international law".
    In the mid-1950s he began to write for the stage and The Room was published in 1957.
    A year later his first full length play, The Birthday Party, was produced in the West End but closed after just one week to disastrous reviews.
    It was his second full-length play, The Caretaker (1960) with which Pinter secured his reputation as one of the country's foremost dramatists and playwrights.
    He won many awards for his plays, the greatest of which was the Nobel Prize for Literature on October 13, 2005.
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