Blue Plaque unveiled at Harold Pinter’s childhood home in Clapton

By Hackney Citizen | Saturday 22 September 2012 at 20:06
Harold Pinter outside 19 Thistlewaite Road, 1978.

Harold Pinter outside 19 Thistlewaite Road, 1978. Photograph: Lady Antonia Fraser Pinter

The house where one of the country’s most acclaimed dramatists was born was marked with a plaque unveiled today.

Harold Pinter, whose seminal works include The Birthday Party, The Homecoming, and Betrayal, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005.

Pinter, who died in 2008, was born into a working class Jewish family on a street just off Lower Clapton Road.

As a child he attended Hackney Downs Grammar School, where he was encouraged by an inspirational English teacher, and his first published poetry appeared in the school newspaper.

A screenwriter, actor and poet as well as a playwright, Pinter rose to international renown, and the term ‘Pinter-esque’ was even coined by critics to describe his unsettling brand of modernist drama.

The plaque was unveiled by his widow, Lady Antonia Fraser Pinter.

Ian Rathbone of Clapton Pond Neighborhood Action Group said: “It is important to note that someone as internationally known and respected as Harold Pinter came from such relatively humble beginnings.”

 

 

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