Ronald Harwood

Sir Ronald Harwood, CBE, FRSL (born Ronald Horwitz; 9 November 1934) is a South African-born British author, playwright and screenwriter. He is most noted for his plays for the British stage as well as the screenplays for The Dresser (for which he was nominated for an Oscar) and The Pianist, for which he won the 2003 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He was nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007).

Sir Ronald Harwood
Born
Ronald Horwitz

(1934-11-09) 9 November 1934
Cape Town, South Africa
OccupationWriter, screenwriter
Years active1960–present
Spouse(s)
Natasha Riehle
​
(
m. 1959; died 2013)

Early life and career

Harwood was born Ronald Horwitz in Cape Town, South Africa, the son of Isobel (née Pepper) and Isaac Horwitz.[1] After attending Sea Point High School,[2] Harwood moved from Cape Town to London in 1951 to pursue a career in the theatre. He changed his surname from Horwitz to Harwood after an English master told him it was too foreign and too Jewish for a stage actor.[3]

After training for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he joined the Shakespeare Company of Sir Donald Wolfit. From 1953 to 1958, Harwood was Sir Donald's personal dresser. He would later draw on this experience when he wrote the stage play, The Dresser, and the biography, Sir Donald Wolfit CBE: His life and work in the Unfashionable Theatre. In 1959, after leaving the Donald Wolfit Company, he joined the 59 Theatre Company for a season at the Lyric Hammersmith during which time he played the role of Pablo both in the stage debut of Alun Owen's play The Rough and Ready Lot and in its 1959 television adaptation.[4][5]

In 1960, Harwood began a career as a writer and published his first novel, All the Same Shadows in 1961, the screenplay, Private Potter in 1962, and the produced stage play, March Hares in 1964. Harwood continued at a prolific pace penning more than 21 stage plays, and 10 books. He also created more than 16 screen plays, but seldom wrote original material directly for the screen, usually acting as an adapter, sometimes of his own work (notably The Dresser).

One of the recurring themes in Harwood's work is his fascination for the stage, its performing artists and artisans as displayed in The Dresser, his plays, After the Lions (about Sarah Bernhardt), Another Time (a semi-autobiographical piece about a gifted South African pianist), Quartet (about ageing opera singers) and his non-fiction book All the World's a Stage, a general history of theatre.

Harwood also has a strong interest in the Nazi period, especially the situation of individuals who either voluntarily collaborated with the Nazis or, alternatively, who faced strong pressure to do so and had, in each case, to work out their own personal combination of resistance, deception and compromise. His work focusing on this period includes the films Operation Daybreak (covering the assassination by the Czechoslovakian Resistance of Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich), The Statement (a fictionalized account of the post-War life-on-the-run of French collaborator Paul Touvier), The Pianist (an adaptation of the autobiography of the Jewish-Polish musician Władysław Szpilman covering his survival during the Nazi occupation of Poland), the play later adapted to film Taking Sides (focused on the post-War "de-Nazification" investigation of the German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler), the play Collaboration (about the composer Richard Strauss and his partnership with the Jewish writer Stefan Zweig), and the play An English Tragedy (dealing with the British fascist John Amery).[6][7]

Harwood also wrote the screenplay for the films, The Browning Version (1994) with Albert Finney, Being Julia (2004) with Annette Bening and Jeremy Irons, and Roman Polanski's version of Oliver Twist (2005) with Ben Kingsley.

He won an Academy Award for the script of The Pianist, having already been nominated for The Dresser in 1983. Harwood received his third Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2007 for his adaptation of the memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, for which he also won a BAFTA and the Prix Jacques Prévert du Scénario in 2008, for Best Adaptation. In 2008, Harwood was also awarded the Humanitas Award in recognition of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Recognition

Harwood was president of the English PEN Club from 1989 to 1993, and of PEN International from 1993 to 1997. He was chairman of the Royal Society of Literature from 2001 to 2004, and is president of the Royal Literary Fund since 2005. He was made Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL) in 1974, Knight (Chevalier) of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1996, and Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1999.

In 2003, he was appointed a member at the Department of Language and Literature of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He was awarded a DLitt degree from Keele University in 2002,[8] honoured with a Doctor Honoris Causa from the Krastyo Sarafov National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts (Sofia, Bulgaria) in 2007, made an Honorary Fellow of the Central School of Speech and Drama (London, England) in 2007, and an Honorary Fellow of the University of Chichester in 2009. Harwood was knighted in the 2010 Birthday Honours.[9]

National Life Stories conducted an oral history interview (C1173/02) with Harwood in 2005-2007 for its An Oral History of Theatre Design collection held by the British Library.[10] The British Library also acquired the papers of Ronald Harwood in 2004 consisting of manuscripts and papers, correspondence, and press cuttings.[11]

He has been the Chairman of the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford since 2008. In June 2013, he was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Aberdeen by the Duchess of Rothesay.[12] He received the National Jewish Theatre Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.

In May 2017 an authorized biography of Harwood, Speak Well of Me by W. Sydney Robinson, was published by Oberon Books.

Personal life

He attended the Seapoint Boys' High School in that area of Cape Town. He moved to England in 1951. In 1959, he married Natasha Riehle (1938–2013), a descendant of Russian nobility. They had three children: Antony (born 1960), Deborah (born 1963), and Alexandra (born 1966).[13]

The actor Sir Antony Sher is his cousin. He is the brother of South African dance critic Eve Borland.[14]

Bibliography

Stage plays

Screenplays

Books and published works
  • All the Same Shadows (novel) Cape (1961)
  • George Washington September Sir! (novel) Avon (1961)
  • The Guilt Merchants (novel) Cape (1963) ISBN 978-0-030-81338-2
  • The Girl in Melanie Klein (novel) Secker & Warburg (1969) ISBN 978-0-030-76440-0
  • Sir Donald Wolfit: His Life and Work in the Unfashionable Theatre (biography) Secker & Warburg (1971) ISBN 0-436-19121-0
  • Articles of Faith (novel – winner of the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize) Secker & Warburg (1973) ISBN 0-436-19122-9
  • The Genoa Ferry (novel) Secker & Warburg (1976) ISBN 0-436-19123-7
  • César and Augusta (novel about the composer César Franck) Secker & Warburg (1978) ISBN 0-436-19119-9
  • One. Interior. Day. Adventures in the Film Trade, Secker & Warburg (1978) ISBN 0-436-19124-5
  • New Stories 3: An Arts Council Anthology (with Francis King) Hutchinson (1978) ISBN 0-09-133271-0
  • The Dresser (play) Grove Press (1981) ISBN 0-394-17936-6
  • A Night at the Theatre (editor), Methuen (1982) ISBN 0-413-49950-2
  • The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (play) Amber Lane (1983) ISBN 0-906399-42-4
  • After the Lions (play) Amber Lane (1983) ISBN 0-906399-41-6
  • All the World's a Stage (theatre history), Secker & Warburg (1984) ISBN 0-436-19132-6
  • The Ages of Gielgud, an Actor at Eighty, Hodder & Stoughton (1984) ISBN 0-340-34828-3
  • Tramway Road (play) Amber Lane (1984) ISBN 0-906399-58-0
  • The Deliberate Death of a Polish Priest (play) Amber Lane (1985) ISBN 0-906399-63-7
  • Interpreters (play) Amber Lane (1986) ISBN 0-906399-67-X
  • Mandela (a Channel Four book), Boxtree (1987) ISBN 1-85283-204-5
  • Dear Alec: Guinness at 75 (editor), Hodder & Stoughton (1989) ISBN 0-340-49954-0
  • Another Time (play) Amber Lane (1989) ISBN 0-906399-98-X
  • Reflected Glory (play) Faber (1992) ISBN 0-571-16463-3
  • Home (novel) Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1993) ISBN 0-297-81368-4
  • The Collected Plays of Ronald Harwood, Faber (1993) ISBN 0-571-17001-3
  • The Faber Book of the Theatre (editor) Faber (1994) ISBN 0-571-16481-1
  • Harwood Plays: Two (Contemporary Classics), Faber (1995) ISBN 90-01-87742-7
  • The Handyman (play) Faber (1997) ISBN 0-571-19041-3
  • Quartet/Equally Divided (plays) Faber (1999) ISBN 0-571-20092-3)
  • Mahler's Conversion (play) Faber (2001) ISBN 978-0-571-21231-6
  • The Pianist/Taking Sides (screenplays) Faber (2003) ISBN 0-571-21281-6
  • An English Tragedy (play) Faber (2006) ISBN 0-571-23328-7
  • Ronald Harwood's Adaptations: From Other Works Into Films, Guerilla Books (2007) ISBN 978-0-9554943-0-7
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See also

References
  1. "Ronald Harwood Biography (1934-)". www.filmreference.com.
  2. Robinson, W. Sydney (1 June 2017). "Speak Well of Me: The Authorised Biography of Ronald Harwood: The Authorised Biography of Ronald Harwood". Oberon Books – via Google Books.
  3. Walker, Tim "In Praise of the Patriotic Playwright" Archived 19 November 2015 at the Wayback Machine, The Spectator, 14 June 2006
  4. Owen, Alun (1960). The Rough and Ready Lot: A play in Three Acts. Cover design by Elisabeth Frink (First ed.). London: Encore Publishing Co. Ltd. p. 4.
  5. "The Rough and Ready Lot", Radio Times, London (1871), p. 19, 18 September 1959, retrieved 6 April 2016
  6. "Subscribe to read | Financial Times". www.ft.com.
  7. Evening Standard review, 19 February 2008
  8. "Home". Keele University.
  9. "No. 59446". The London Gazette (Supplement). 12 June 2010. p. 1.
  10. National Life Stories, 'Harwood, Ronald (5 of 18) An Oral History of Theatre Design', The British Library Board, 2007. Retrieved 1 February 2018
  11. Ronald Harwood Papers, archives and manuscripts catalogue, the British Library. Retrieved 26 may 2020
  12. "HRH The Duchess of Rothesay joins University 'family'". University of Aberdeen.
  13. "Lady Harwood (1938–2013)". Peerage News.
  14. "Final curtain for Eve Borland – dancer, teacher, critic." (21 August 2007) The Cape Times, Cape Town
  15. "Stage review of the 2004-5 revival of The Dresser".

Further reading
  • Who's Who in the Theatre 17th edition, Gale (1981) ISBN 0-8103-0235-7
  • Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies, 4th edition, HarperCollins (2006) ISBN 0-00-716957-4
  • Sydney Robinson, W., Speak Well of Me: the authorized biography of Ronald Harwood, London (2017)
  • Theatre Record and its annual Indexes
  • The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English, Oxford (1996) ISBN 0-19-212271-1
Non-profit organization positions
Preceded by
György Konrád		 International President of PEN International
1993–1997		 Succeeded by
Homero Aridjis
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