Harold Pinter Archive Blog

East London united

  I’m just back from collecting the archive of the writer and critic John Berger. John generously donated his archive to the British Library’s collections, but on the (entirely reasonable, and enjoyable) condition that we come out to pick it up from his Alpine home…and help out on the farming while there. In the end the weather conspired against haymaking, but I spent a very pleasant few days sorting through the archive in preparation for its transport back to the UK, and recording my impressions on audioboo. Although John has lived in the Haute-Savoie for many years now, he hails, like Harold Pinter, from East London, and was born in Stoke Newington, not far from Pinter’s Hackney. I haven’t as yet found any Pinter letters in John’s archive, but John was delighted to know that his papers would rest alongside Harold’s archive: just one of a number of examples of the ways in which real-life relationships extend to posterity in our climate-controlled storage area. 

Censoring Harold Pinter

Prior to the Theatres Act (1968), it was a requirement that all stage plays intended for public performance should be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office for licensing. The British Library holds copies of the play scripts that were submitted and the readers' reports compiled as part of the licensing process. The reports outlined the plot of the play and noted any cuts that should be made before a licence could be granted. This week, I have been digging out the reader’s reports relating to Harold Pinter’s plays so that I can add the references to my catalogue. Some of Pinter’s plays of this period escaped this treatment as they were performed in private clubs, but for the others the reports did not hold back -
The Birthday Party: ‘…an insane pointless play’. [LCP CORR 1958/969].
The Caretaker: ‘…a piece of incoherence in the manner of Beckett’. [LCP CORR 1960/904].
The Collection: ‘The dialogue has the usual Pinter-esque flavour, but the point of the play is anyone’s guess’. [LCP CORR 1962/2660].
The Dumb Waiter:  ‘…stupid little play’. [LCP CORR 1960/720].
The Homecoming:  ‘…dialogue is brilliantly clever’. [LCP CORR 1965/4820].
A Night Out: ‘It’s a very poor and obvious play’. [LCP CORR 1961/2018].
The Room: ‘Another dreary mess of symbolism’. [LCP CORR 1960/719].
A Slight Ache:  (first performed as part of a triple bill with plays by John Mortimer and N F Simpson) ‘Mr Pinter, always the least incomprehensible of the three authors, here increases mightily in this regard’. [LCP CORR 1961/1497].

Further information about the history of theatre licensing can be found in The Lord Chamberlain Regrets… A History of British Theatre Censorship by Dominic Shellard and Steve Nicholson with Miriam Handley (2004).

(Quotes by kind permission of The Royal Archives and The British Library. Please contact mss@bl.uk if you would like to view any of the Lord Chamberlain’s Plays collection).

Pinter and Cricket

I had an enquiry recently about whether the Harold Pinter archive held any items relating to cricket. Perhaps unsurprisingly to those of you who are familiar with Pinter’s personal interests, there is quite a lot of material.

Cricket is mentioned frequently in correspondence, particularly with Pinter’s lifelong friends. The letters from Samuel Beckett often make reference to the two playwright’s shared interest in the sport. In one, Beckett writes about his hope that they can go to Lords or the Oval together to see a game, and in another writes ‘tricky wicket here but not quite yet out’. There is also correspondence relating to the Gaieties Cricket Club, which was founded in 1937 for members of the theatrical profession and has strong connections with Pinter.

A run of correspondence between Harold Pinter and his friend Alan Wilkinson about a particular cricket catch resulted in the publication of The Catch: A Correspondence. A special edition of The Catch was recently presented to The British Library by the author, Alan Wilkinson. Part of the original correspondence that inspired the booklet is held within the Pinter archive

Cricket has also been an inspiration for some of Pinter’s other writings; included in the archive is a booklet about the cricketer Arthur Wellard and several handwritten and typewritten drafts of the poems ‘Cricket at Night’ and ‘Len Hutton’.