UK playwright Harold Pinter dies
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7799708.stm
Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter, who had cancer, died on Christmas Eve aged 78.
He wrote more than 30 plays including The Caretaker and The Birthday Party. His film scripts include The French Lieutenant's Woman.
His style was so distinctive, "Pinteresque" entered the Oxford English Dictionary.
His wife, Lady Antonia Fraser, said: "He was a great, and it was a privilege to live with him for over 33 years."
He had been due to pick up an honorary degree earlier this month from the Central School of Speech and Drama in London but was forced to withdraw due to illness.
BBC Creative Director Alan Yentob told the BBC: "He was a unique figure in British theatre. He has dominated the theatre scene since the 1950s."
Michael Billington, Pinter's friend and biographer, said he was "devastated and saddened" by the news.
He told the BBC: "Harold had been ill for a very long time, but he had a titanic will and one imagined he would go on fighting.
"He was a fighter in the field of politics, he fought strenuously against American and British foreign policy, but also in his work you see this, there is a combative spirit in his work.
"He was a generous and loyal man and very attached to the people whom he sincerely liked."