'World's leading playwright' Harold Pinter dies

Harold Pinter, the Nobel Prize-winning playwright, actor and author has died aged 78.

Pinter, whose works include The Birthday Party and The Caretaker, died on Christmas Eve.

He had been suffering from cancer.

Widely regarded as one of Britain's greatest post-war playwrights, Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005.

His second wife, Lady Antonia Fraser, said last night: "He was a great, and it was a privilege to live with him for over 33 years. He will never be forgotten."

Friends and colleagues also paid tribute to Pinter, calling him "the leading playwright in the world".

During a career spanning five decades, he wrote more than 50 plays and screenplays as well as film scripts for cinema and television.

Pinter was recognised as having such impact on modern film and theatre that the adjective "Pinteresque" was included in the dictionary, to encapsulate his trademark silences.

In its citation, the Academy that awards the Nobel Prize said Pinter was "generally seen as the foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the 20th century".

He was also renowned for his left-wing political views and was a vociferous critic of US and British foreign policy, voicing opposition on issues including the bombing of Afghanistan in 2001.

Pinter's first work was The Room in 1957.

A year later his first full length play, The Birthday Party, was produced in the West End, and despite closing after just one week to disastrous reviews, Pinter continued to write at a prolific rate.

It was his second full-length play, The Caretaker, in 1960 with which Pinter secured his reputation as one of the country's foremost dramatists and playwrights.

Several more works followed in quick succession and in 1965 one of his most famous plays, The Homecoming, was published, winning a host of awards.

Fellow playwright and lifelong friend, Ronald Harwood last night praised Pinter's creative genius and spontaneity.

He said: "He was truly original. Nobody wrote like Harold before he came along and nobody has ever written like him since.

"I, like many other people, found it difficult to recognise his immense talent when I first met him in 1953, Similarly his first works received terrible reviews.

"But he became, without doubt, the leading playwright in the world.

"He was incredibly secretive about his work. I believe he relied upon an inspirational moment, then he would suddenly put the idea down and create a masterpiece, seemingly out of thin air."

The 74-year-old added: "I was terribly sad to hear of Harold's death – he was my oldest and best friend.

"He was complex, he could be very difficult at times yet I knew him to be an extremely loving person as well.

"Above all, he was the most reliable friend you could ever have. If I found myself in trouble, Harold would have been the first person I would turn to."

An outspoken political campaigner, Pinter was a critic of Tony Blair and George Bush, who he called a "mass murderer".

He condemned the invasion of Iraq as "a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the conception of international law". He singled Tony Blair out for criticism when Nato bombed Serbia.

Pinter was frequently criticised for the stands he took throughout his life, but once said in an interview: "Any writer who pops his head over the trenches and dares to speak in this country is really placed outside the pale."

Michael Billington, Pinter's friend and biographer, said: "He was a fighter, a fighter in politics and a staunch critic of American foreign policy and of British foreign policy. He had a combative spirit and his work reflected that – his plays were about battles, a battle for territory or for dominance or for supremacy.

"The personal and political were not separate. He saw that domestic life was a battlefield just like political life and his genius, in my view, was to connect these two worlds.

"One of his achievements was to get rid of the easy conclusion.

"I was devastated and saddened at Harold's death. He was a very generous man and loyal to those he admired."

Pinter was born in Hackney, London, in 1930, the only son of immigrant Jews, who ran a tailor's shop in Stoke Newington.

His first love was acting and he accepted a grant to study at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts only to drop out two years later.

He continued to appear on stage until 1957 when, out of frustration, he turned to writing and published The Room.

Pinter also wrote extensively for the cinema including The Servant (1963), The Last Tycoon (1974) and The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981).

He did not enjoy a good relationship with critics and once questioned why they existed.

"I find critics on the whole a pretty unnecessary bunch of people," he said.

The writer's private life made headlines when he married biographer Lady Antonia Fraser in 1980 after leaving his first wife, actress Vivien Merchant, whom he married in 1956, and with whom he had a son.

Soon after their parting she died of alcoholism and their son Daniel effectively disowned his father. Pinter was stricken with guilt at the death of his first wife.

In the 1960s Pinter had an affair with broadcaster Joan Bakewell. The 1978 play Betrayal was partly based on his affair, which lasted seven years and ended in 1969.

From the 1980s onwards he wrote only around half a dozen plays. He insisted he did not write the works, they wrote him.

His 70th birthday in 2000 saw a number of plays revived to mark the occasion.

In 2002, Pinter was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus and underwent a course of chemotherapy, which he called a "personal nightmare".

He said afterwards: "I'm now older and I've been through a major operation in the past year so I've been through the valley of the shadow of death.

"While in many respects I have certain characteristics that I had then, I'm also a very changed man. But I don't think I can define precisely how I've changed."

In 2005 Pinter suggested he had written his last play and focused on poetry, alongside forays into acting and screenwriting.

He said: "I think I've stopped writing plays now, but I haven't stopped writing poems.

"I think I've written 29 plays. Isn't that enough? I think it's enough for me. I've found other forms now."

He returned to the stage, winning rave reviews for his performance of Samuel Beckett's monologue, "Krapp's Last Tape", in London in 2006.

Pinter was appointed CBE in 1966. In 1996 e turned down a knighthood, In 2002 he was appointed a Companion of Honour.

Earlier this month he was due to pick up an honorary degree from the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, but was forced to withdraw from the event due to illness.

Last year, Pinter sold his archive – more than 150 boxes of manuscripts, scrapbooks and emails – to the British Library for £1.1 million.

The material also includes letters, photographs and programmes relating to his life.

Highlights include a run of letters from the Irish writer Samuel Beckett, an "amusing" exchange of correspondence with the poet Philip Larkin, and a draft of Sir Harold's unpublished memoirs of his youth, The Queen Of All The Fairies.