Category Archives: Uncategorised

We launch the Pinter Legacies database with a new interview with Samuel West

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We are delighted to formally launch the Harold Pinter Histories and Legacies database today. To mark this event, we are releasing an interview with Samuel West that was conducted by Alexander Lass for the Pinter Legacies project in February this year. You can hear the interview on our Soundcloud account. West is an actor and director with a significant profile in the history of the production of Pinter’s works in … Continue reading →

Shut It Down: The Many Faces of Censorship

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Two days recently spent in the Pinter Archive, at the British Library, have predictably enough turned up a few more gems. During this visit, I looked at a number of scrapbooks containing materials relating to Pinter’s political activism. Taking a broad view of the items Pinter collected over several decades makes it easier to spot the themes at work. For example, the items Pinter collated into scrapbook form through the … Continue reading →

Reflections on the ‘Pinter on Film, Television and Radio’ conference, 19-20 September 2018

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The University of Reading arm of the Pinter Histories and Legacies project—peopled by Professor Jonathan Bignell, Dr Billy Smart and Dr Amanda Wrigley—were thrilled to welcome project colleagues and an international group of academic friends old and new from an exciting range of disciplines to the University of Reading’s Minghella Studies, the home of the Film, Theatre and Television Department, on 19 September 2018 for the first day of the … Continue reading →

Pinter and the Law; Or, When Life Imitates Art 

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In my research for this project I often come across information which is familiar because I’ve seen it more than once. Then there’s the sort which is ‘familiar’ because I’ve seen but forgotten it along the way. But the best scenarios are when I discover new information–new to me or, even better, new to a lot of folks. In this regard I’ve been wanting to write a blog on misses, … Continue reading →

The Fact of Pinter

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To open his keynote speech for the Staging Pinter conference at Birmingham, playwright and lecturer Steve Waters declared that ‘Pinter is such a fact for all of us.’ The presentations and interaction that transpired over Friday and Saturday demonstrated, explored and even interrogated the fact that Pinter ‘is such a fact.’ The demographic of delegates was international: with parts of Europe, the Middle East, North America and Great Britain represented and … Continue reading →

Brian Blessed and Pinter’s The Room: a real knock-out

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‘Shouting? Swearing? Threats? Menacing looks? I know what you’re thinking: it sounds just like a Harold Pinter play!’ Brian Blessed, Absolute Pandemonium: My Louder than Life Story (London: Pan Books, 2015), p. 77. As the Harold Pinter: Histories and Legacies team prepare for the holiday season, what better time to reflect on some of the more surprising finds and amusing anecdotes we’ve come across? In his 2015 autobiography, Absolute Pandemonium, … Continue reading →