Honest John

Although writing a biography of John Osborne can’t be the most difficult task as Osborne left voluminous and laceratingly honest diaries

Although writing a biography of John Osborne can’t be the most difficult task as Osborne left voluminous and laceratingly honest diaries, as well as the two volumes of autobiography, I thought John Heilpern’s new book about him, A Patriot for Us, the Book of the Week on Radio Four last week, was quite compelling. Abridged by Robert Evans and read by Gareth Thomas, the book made it clear that Osborne was incapable of self-censorship and that, as Heilpern put it, his life was governed by ‘self-disgust and unconquerable clenched fear’. As the playwright wrote, ‘It is fear. I cannot rid myself of it, it numbs me. It sterilises me…’ It’s also become more apparent over the years that his plays are more autobiographical than at first thought. Jimmy Porter’s marriage to Alison reflected his own first marriage to Pamela Lane so that when the curtain first went up she inwardly groaned at the sight of the ironing board on stage.

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A later play — I think it was The Hotel in Amsterdam — has Paul Scofield satirising the poverty of language to be found in the letters of the not-very-well educated, something Osborne would have been familiar with from his own family experiences.