On 13th Oct 2005, three days after his 75th birthday, it was announced that Harold Pinter had won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Harold Pinter archive contains many letters that chart the reaction to this announcement and Pinter’s subsequent Nobel Lecture. The main body of letters are dated 13 October 2005 to 28 January 2006 and either congratulate Pinter on his prize, or echo or condemn sentiments expressed in his lecture. The letters come from all over the world and from people of all walks of life, friends and strangers alike. There is also a scrapbook of newspaper clippings showing international press coverage of the announcement and ceremony. The clippings come from the newspapers of Britain, Spain, Egypt, France, Greece, India, Italy, USA and Japan.
Harold Pinter’s Nobel Lecture was entitled ‘Art, Truth and Politics’. The lecture was pre-recorded and was delivered via video at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, on 7 December 2005. The archive holds many handwritten and typewritten drafts of this speech, which detail the changes made to lecture at each stage, including how the title was changed from the original ‘Art and Politics’ to ‘Art, Truth and Politics’.
I have spent the last few days sorting through this material, arranging the correspondence into chronological order and writing a basic list of what is there.