British Library Responses To Pinter's Death
After Pinter's death, the British Library updated its official Harold Pinter Archive Blog, posting a memorial notice on 29 December 2008, stating that "Harold was a formidable and generous champion of the Library and its work, and the British Library was immensely proud to have added the Pinter archive to our Manuscript Collections in 2007," and promising that "more detailed tributes" would be appearing there soon. On 6 January 2009, Jamie Andrews, Head of Modern Literary Manuscripts at the British Library and custodian of Pinter's Archive, posted " 'Tender the dead, as you yourself would be tendered...' ", alluding to Hirst's monologue about the faces of the dead in his photograph album from No Man's Land which Pinter had requested that Michael Gambon read at his funeral, which took place on 31 December 2008.
Andrews begins by relating his experience as an invited panelist in the Allied Organization Program arranged by the Harold Pinter Society at the 2008 MLA Convention, on 28 December. Having seen Rupert Goold's production of No Man's Land (with Gambon as Hirst) "just a few days before news of Harold's passing" on the 24th, and "Already carrying the lines and images around" in his head when he "read of the use of Hirst's monologue as part of the funeral," he concludes: "As always with Pinter, there's a certain ambiguity to swift response 'They're blank, mate, blank. The blank dead'. Personally, I'm with Hirst who, after a trademark 'silence', ripostes quite simply: 'Nonsense'."
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