John Osborne: Look back in Anger - A Casebook

by John Russell Taylor

Jimmy Porter plays trumpet badly. He browbeats his flatmate, terrorizes his wife, and is not above sleeping with her best friend-who loathes Jimmy almost as much as he loathes himself. Yet this working-class Hamlet, the original Angry Young Man, is one of the most mesmerizing characters ever to burst onto a stage, a malevolently vital, volcanically articulate internal exile in the dreary, dreaming Siberia of postwar England. First produced in 1956, Look Back in Anger launched a revolution in the English theater. Savagely, sadly, and always impolitely, it compels readers and audiences to acknowledge the hidden currents of rottenness and rage in what used to be called "the good life."

206 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1970

About the author

John Russell Taylor was an English critic, author, and historian whose work shaped modern writing on film, theatre, and visual art. Educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, and the Courtauld Institute of Art, he emerged in the early 1960s as one of Britain’s most influential cultural commentators. He wrote on cinema for Sight and Sound and Monthly Film Bulletin, and became film critic of The Times, later serving for decades as its art critic.
Taylor authored landmark studies of British drama and cinema, as well as acclaimed biographies of figures such as Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Ingrid Bergman, Vivien Leigh, and Alec Guinness. His book Strangers in Paradise: The Hollywood Emigres 1933–1950 remains a key work on European artists in American film. After developing a close friendship with Alfred Hitchcock, he became the director’s authorised biographer.
From the early 1970s he also taught film at the University of Southern California, while contributing to major British and American publications. In addition to film and theatre, Taylor wrote extensively on modern and contemporary art, producing numerous monographs and broader studies. He also served on juries at major international film festivals and edited Films and Filming magazine for several years.