John Osborne The Many Lives of the Angry Young Man

John Osborne, the original Angry Young Man, shocked and transformed British theater in the 1950s with his playLook Back in Anger. This startling biographythe first to draw on the secret notebooks in which he recorded his anguish and depressionreveals the notorious rebel in all his heartrending complexity. Through a working-class childhood and five marriages, Osborne led a tumultuous life. An impossible father, he threw his teenage daughter out of the house and never spoke to her again. His last written words were "I have sinned." Theater critic John Heilpern's detailed portrait, including interviews with Osborne's daughter, scores of friends and enemies, and his alleged male lover, shows us a contradictory geniusan ogre with charm, a radical who hated change, and above all, a defiant individualist. From the Trade Paperback edition.

John Heilpern is the author of the classic book about theater Conference of the Birds: The Story of Peter Brook in Africa and of How Good is David Mamet, Anyway?, a collection of his theater essays and reviews. Born in England and educated at Oxford, his interviews for The Observer (London) received a British Press Award. In 1980, he moved to New York where he became a weekly columnist for The Times of London. An adjunct assistant professor of drama at Columbia University, he is drama critic for the New York Observer.


From the Hardcover edition.