John Arden (born 26 October 1930) is an
award-winning English playwright from Barnsley
(which at
the time was in the West Riding
of Yorkshire). His works tend to expose social issues of
personal concern. He is a member of the
Royal Society of
Literature.
He was
educated at Sedbergh School,
King's College,
Cambridge
and Edinburgh College of Art
, where he studied architecture. He first
gained critical attention for the
radio
play,
The Life of Man in 1956 shortly after finishing
his studies.
His 1959 play,
Serjeant
Musgrave's Dance, dealing with the protestors of war and
its realities, is considered Arden's best work. Arden is reputed to
be one of the greatest playwrights of the post-
Look Back in Anger era. His work
bears the heavy influence of
Bertolt
Brecht and the Epic Theatre.
Other plays include Live Like
Pigs, The Workhouse Donkey and Armstrong's Last Goodnight,
the last of which was performed at the National
Theatre
, starring Albert
Finney. His 1978 radio play
Pearl was considered one of the best
plays for that medium in a
Guardian survey.
He has also written a number of novels, including
Silence Among
the Weapons, which was shortlisted for the
Man Booker Prize, and
Books of
Bale, about the
protestant apologist
John Bale.
He is
notable for a number of highly public fallings-out with the theatre
establishment - with his wife and co-writer Margaretta D'Arcy, he picketed the
RSC premiere of his
Arthurian play The Island of the
Mighty; and they have written several plays highly critical of
British presence in Ireland
, where he
now lives, and the Military-Industrial
Complex.
He has a long history of being associated with radical left-wing
politics in the UK and Ireland. In 1961 he was a founder member of
the anti-nuclear
Committee of 100 and he
also chaired the pacifist weekly,
Peace News. In Ireland,
he was for a while a member of
Sinn
Féin. He is also a well-known supporter of civil liberties and
is critical of government anti-terror legislation, as was
demonstrated in his 2007 radio play
The Scam.
References
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