Dearest Squirrel…': The Intimate Letters of John Osborne and Pamela Lane

by John Osborne, Pamela Lane, Peter Whitebrook (Editor)

A completely fresh insight into the mind of one of the UK's greatest playwrights, the letters between John Osborne and his first wife, actress Pamela Lane, are also a love letter to a now defunct system of repertory theatre, and life in post-war Britain.As these letters reveal, soon after their divorce, Osborne and Lane began a mutually supportive, loyal, frequently stormy and sometimes sexually intimate alliance lasting thirty years until Osborne's death. By the mid-1980s, they had become closer and more trusting than they had been since their earliest years together.  'You are for me what you always were,' Pamela told him, 'I am in love with you still.'  It is, he declared, 'my fortune to have loved someone for a lifetime.'Acerbic, witty, candid and heartbreaking, they reveal a unique relationship, troubled, tender and enduring.

416 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 1, 2018

About the author

People best know British playwright John James Osborne, member of the Angry Young Men, for his play Look Back in Anger (1956); vigorous social protest characterizes works of this group of English writers of the 1950s.

This screenwriter acted and criticized the Establishment. The stunning success of Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre. In a productive life of more than four decades, Osborne explored many themes and genres, writing for stage, film and television. His extravagant and iconoclastic personal life flourished. He notoriously used language of the ornate violence on behalf of the political causes that he supported and against his own family, including his wives and children, who nevertheless often gave as good as they got.

He came onto the theatrical scene at a time when British acting enjoyed a golden age, but most great plays came from the United States and France. The complexities of the postwar period blinded British plays. In the post-imperial age, Osborne of the writers first addressed purpose of Britain. He first questioned the point of the monarchy on a prominent public stage. During his peak from 1956 to 1966, he helped to make contempt an acceptable and then even cliched onstage emotion, argued for the cleansing wisdom of bad behavior and bad taste, and combined unsparing truthfulness with devastating wit.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

From BBC Radio 4 - Book of the week:
John Osborne meets Pamela Lane in 1951 and within three months the couple are married. So begins an extraordinary love affair that lasts over thirty years.

Episode 2 of 5
John Osborne denies that Look Back in Anger is at least in part autobiographical, despite significant resemblances to his early relationship with Pamela Lane.

Episode 3 of 5
After separating from John Osborne, Pamela Lane experiences financial difficulties, brought on partly by a sudden lack of acting parts. But Osborne comes to the rescue.

Episode 4 of 5
Several wives in, John Osborne attempts a communication blackout with Pamela Lane, beset as they both are with personal and financial difficulties.

Episode 5 of 5
Despite many periods of separation, John Osborne and Pamela Lane managed to remain in love, although Pamela's increasing requests for money took their toll on the relationship.

A completely fresh insight into the mind of one of the UK's greatest playwrights, the letters between John Osborne and his first wife, actress Pamela Lane, are also a love letter to a now defunct system of repertory theatre and life in post-war Britain.

As these letters reveal, soon after their divorce, Osborne and Lane began a mutually supportive, loyal, frequently stormy and sometimes sexually intimate alliance lasting thirty years until Osborne's death. By the mid- 1980s, they had become closer and more trusting than they had been since their earliest years together.

"You are for me what you always were," Pamela told him, "I am in love with you still."

It is, he declared, "my fortune to have loved someone for a lifetime."

Acerbic, witty, candid and heartbreaking, the letters reveal a unique relationship - troubled, tender and enduring.

The author, Peter Whitebrook, was born in London and has written and broadcast extensively on the theatre and literature. His co-adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath won a Fringe First Award. His biography of John Osborne was nominated for both the Sheridan Morley Prize for biography and the Theatre Book Prize.

Read by Simon Shepherd and Amanda Root
Abridged by Polly Coles
Produced by Clive Brill

A Brill production for BBC Radio 4.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09z...