Harold Pinter — playwright (nobel) with roots in the Russian Empire
Harold Pinter was born in Hackney, in east London, on 10 October 1930, the only child of Hyman "Jack" Pinter (1902-1997), a ladies' tailor, and Frances Pinter, née Moskowitz (1904-1992), British Jews of Eastern European descent. His connection to the Russian Empire runs through one of his grandparents.
For much of his life Pinter accepted an aunt's account that the family was Sephardic and had left Spain at the time of the Inquisition, and for his early poems he used the pen name Pinta and variations such as da Pinto. Later research by the historian Antonia Fraser, his second wife, showed the story to be apocryphal: three of his grandparents came from Poland and the fourth from Odessa, then a port of the Russian Empire, now Odesa in Ukraine. His authorised biographer, Michael Billington, records the same finding. The family was therefore Ashkenazi. Published sources do not name the Odessa-born grandparent or say on which side of the family he or she stood, nor do they give the Polish grandparents' towns.
Pinter was educated at Hackney Downs School, where he acted Macbeth and Romeo under the teacher Joseph Brearley and broke the school sprinting record. He began acting professionally in 1951, toured with Donald Wolfit's company and spent several years in provincial repertory before turning to writing full time in 1959.
His first play, The Room, was staged in Bristol in 1957. The Birthday Party, written that year and first staged in 1958, closed in London after eight performances but was enthusiastically reviewed by the critic Harold Hobson, and The Caretaker (1960) established him. The Homecoming (1964) and Betrayal (1978) followed, all later filmed from his own screenplays, along with screenplays of others' work, including The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1970) and The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981). He also directed for the stage and wrote for radio and television.
In awarding him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005, the Swedish Academy called him the foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the twentieth century. He received more than fifty awards and honours, among them the Companion of Honour, the CBE and, in 2007, the Légion d'honneur. He died on 24 December 2008, aged seventy-eight.
Tracing the roots — Odesa; Poland
Pinter was born in Hackney in 1930 to Hyman Pinter, a ladies' tailor, and Frances Moskowitz. A family story of Sephardic descent was later shown by Antonia Fraser to be apocryphal: three of his grandparents came from Poland and the fourth from Odesa.
Three grandparents from Poland (towns not documented), one from Odesa (Russian Empire).
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Odesa; Poland. At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.
A career defined by ambition
"The more acute the experience the less articulate its expression."