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Pinter’s Apprenticeship and the BBC

ABSTRACT Drawing on unpublished materials from the BBC Archives, this article provides scholars with vital new contexts for understanding Harold Pinter’s late 1950s and early 1960s attempts to transform his very earliest radio dramas—“Something in Common,” A Slight Ache, A Night Out, and The Dwarfs—into radio broadcasts. The material in the form of memoranda from script readers and producers to whom scripts were sent reveal considerable internal dissent within the staff of the BBC Radio Third Programme Department during this period. In addition to exploring the existing opposition to the radio performance of Pinter’s works amongst elements in the BBC Third Programme hierarchy, this article assesses the personalities involved in the decision-making process at the BBC, the performance of Pinter’s texts in terms of their broadcasting history, and the ways in which BBC radio drama staff, including Barbara Bray, R. D. Smith, and D. G. Bridson, recognised and encouraged Pinter’s genius. These important BBC archival materials afford us with a new understanding of the manner in which the production of Pinter’s early works anticipated the contemporary reactions and subsequent critical perspectives of the full-length plays that later defined his career.