Harold Pinter

1 portrait of Harold Pinter

© Cecil Beaton Archive / Condé Nast

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Harold Pinter

by Cecil Beaton
bromide print, 1962
11 5/8 in. x 9 5/8 in. (294 mm x 244 mm)
Purchased, 1986
Photographs Collection
NPG x26070

On display in Room 28 on Floor 2 at the National Portrait Gallery

Sitterback to top

  • Harold Pinter (1930-2008), Playwright, actor and director. Sitter in 21 portraits.

Artistback to top

  • Cecil Beaton (1904-1980), Photographer, designer and writer. Artist or producer associated with 1114 portraits, Sitter associated with 360 portraits.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Pepper, Terence, Beaton Portraits, 2004 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 5 February - 31 May 2004), p. 135 Read entry

    Beaton’s experiments with multiple exposures were manically revisited with the disastrous book Images (1965), which possibly tried to produce hallucinogenic-type images reflecting 1960s psychedelia. However when the effect was used more sparingly, as in the triple portraits of T. S. Eliot and Harold Pinter (P869(12) and x26070), the results have a stronger validity.

  • Pepper, Terence, Beaton Portraits, 2004 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 5 February to 31 May 2004), p. 135
  • Ribeiro, Aileen, The Gallery of Fashion, 2000, p. 235
  • Ribeiro, Aileen; Blackman, Cally, A Portrait of Fashion: Six Centuries of Dress at the National Portrait Gallery, 2015, p. 235

Linked displays and exhibitionsback to top

Subjects & Themesback to top

Events of 1962back to top

Current affairs

After a series of by-election defeats, the prime minister, Harold MacMillan organises a drastic cabinet reshuffle, dismissing one third of his cabinet. Liberal MP Jeremy Thorpe's wry comment summed up the desperate action: 'greater love hath no man than this, than to lay down his friends for his life.'
Britain suffers the 'Big Freeze' with no frost-free nights between 22nd December 1962 and 5th March 1963.

Art and science

The Beatles have their first hit with Love Me Do and release their first album Please Please Me.
The new Coventry Cathedral is consecrated and creates a showcase for British artistic talent with the first performance of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, a wall hanging by Graham Sutherland, stained glass by John Piper, and sculptures by Jacob Epstein and Elizabeth Frink.

International

The world comes to the brink of nuclear war with the Cuban Missile Crisis. In response to the USA's nuclear advantage, the USSR sent missiles to Cuba. The crisis lasted for 12 days before a deal was finally stuck between Khrushchev and Kennedy in which the Cuban missile bases were dismantled in return for the secret removal of US missiles from Turkey.

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