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1929-1994
Born in London on 12th December 1929, John Osborne changed the face of postwar British theatre with his emotionally charged play Look back in anger with Jimmy Porter, the anti-hero, as the first "angry young man" and the start of the kitchen-sink genre.
The play was set in a shabby attic in a typical Midland town. It captured the imagination of the growing numbers of disillusioned post-war British, and encapsulated the apathy of the time, where principles were being exchanged for bland materialism.
He married five times; to Pamela Lane in 1951, whilst he was a penniless writer working on Look back in anger; to actress Mary Ure in 1957 (she played Alison in the original Look back in anger); to writer Penelope Gilliat in 1966; to actress Jill Bennett in 1968; and to journalist Helen Dawson, a former arts editor for The Observer.
He finally settled in Shropshire in 1984 and lived at The Hurst, at Clunton, until his death of complications from diabetes in 1994. He is buried in Clun churchyard and his wife Helen was buried next to him in 2004. The inscription on his headstone is taken from The entertainer and reads "Let me know where you're working tomorrow night - and I'll come and see YOU." The house is maintaining its literary connections for the future as the Arvon Foundation has created a fourth education and training centre for writers and literary students at The Hurst.
Look back in anger (1956)
The entertainer (1957)
Epitaph for George Dillon (1958)
The world of Paul Slickey (1959)
Luther (1961)
Plays for England: The blood of the Bamburgs and Under
plain cover (1962)
Inadmissible evidence (1964)
A patriot for me (1965)
A bond honoured (1966)
Time present and The hotel in Amsterdam
(1968)
West of Suez (1971)
A sense of detachment (1973)
The end of me old cigar (1975)
Watch it come down (1976)
Déjàvu (1992)
A better class of person (1981)
Almost a gentleman (1991)
Look back in anger (1959)
The entertainer (1959)
Tom Jones (1963)
The right prospectus (1970)
Very like a whale (1971)
Hedda Gabler , adaptation (1972)
The gift of friendship (1972)
A place calling itself Rome , adaptation of Shakespeare's
Coriolanus (1973)
The picture of Dorian Grey , adaptation of Wilde's novel
(1973)
The Literary Encyclopedia has a profile of John Osborne by Andrew Wyllie, Birkbeck College.
More online information about John Osborne and his works can be found at www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc75.html. The Arvon Foundation has its own website.
Page created 29 April 2002 and last updated
7 April 2005
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