Pinter told me his favourite line from literature

29 December 2008

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Michael Henderson remembers the passion for cricket that underpinned his friend’s genius as a playwright, and an unforgettable day at Lord’s

‘I’ll tell you’, he said. ‘“I was adored once too.”’

One by one they pieced it together: Shakespeare, obviously, Twelfth Night, perhaps, yes, certainly Twelfth Night, but was it Sir Toby Belch or Sir Andrew Aguecheek? It couldn’t have been Malvolio, could it? No, it couldn’t. There was some muttering and then some nodding as Pinter confirmed that indeed it was Aguecheek. A wonderful scene, which I observed from the wings.

And what, you may ask, was that evocative cricket sentence? Simply this: ‘That beautiful evening Compton made 70.’ In six words Pinter (who had played truant from RADA to catch the master batsman at work) has caught an image of a youthful summer that speaks for all summers. It is a moment frozen in time, rather like the images that run through No Man’s Land, his great play of memory that is currently playing in the West End.

I sent Pinter a card from Munich last summer, with a verse from Georg Trakl, the Austrian poet, and added his own words about the great Compo. In November I rang to invite him to another of our lunches, promising good company. He looked forward to it, he said, but illness forced him to pull out.

It can be foolish to predict how posterity will treat the work of those we hold to be great in their lifetime, but Pinter’s plays have secured such a firm foothold in the dramatic repertory that his reputation should wax, not wane. He was a great writer, and those whose lives were touched by him, however tangentially, will tell you that his spirit was that of a great man.

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Fergus Pickering

December 30th, 2008 6:35pm Report this comment

The cricket sentence would be about Compo, wouldn't it? Here's another, just a phrase from Sir Pelham Warner 'with a bat that drove better and sweeter than any bat ever made'. What makes it peculiarly right is that Compo batted with any old thing he picked up inh the dressing room.

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