John Heilpern

[Heilpern] writes with infectious verve, championing the plays against carpers and cavillers, and showing how close they were to their creator's raw experience. Above all he celebrates Osborne's cross-grained vitality. His book brings a flesh-and-blood human being back from the shades, shouting, like Jimmy Porter 'Hallelujah! I'm alive!'

His biography is surely a model of its kind: tightly written, vivid, witty, knowledgeable and with a seamless, and often moving, interweaving of the past and present

An enjoyable, exhaustive, well-researched and highly readable biography

Heilpern has produced a riveting biography - Heilpern orchestrates his complex narrative with flair and contrives to invoke affection in the face of bad behaviour....judicious and dependable

He creates an unforgettable portrait

Engrossing...entertaining and deeply affecting, a remembrance of a time when theatre in Britain actually mattered

Heilpern is sharp, gossipy and good fun, and he honours the best of Osborne without disguising the worst

A rip-roaring account of early struggles, huge triumphs, fraught marriages, friends and lovers abused, money wasted and, finally, health and talent evaporated

Both revelatory and disturbing. It paints a portrait of an English writer who is as complex and tormented as Evelyn Waugh

Fascinating...exhaustive perusal of the playwright's formative years

A Patriot for Us

John Osborne (1929-1994), unapologetic rebel and original Angry Young Man, changed the face of modern British theatre forever with Look Back in Anger. An actor turned playwright, Osborne was married five times, his private life generating a tumult and drama to match that of his work. 
 
This startlightly candid, authorised but intimate and informal biography is the first to have access to Osborne's own notebooks and private letters, which record for posterity his often anguished nature. It includes personal interviews with scores of his friends and enemies, among them a bombshell of a confession from Osborne's alleged male lover, and the first public comments from his estranged daughter Nolan, who was thrown out of the family home at just sixteen. 
 
This is an essential, unorthodox, moving and extraordinarily frank portrait of the man, the playwright and his era.

John Heilpern

Praise for John Osborne

[Heilpern] writes with infectious verve, championing the plays against carpers and cavillers, and showing how close they were to their creator's raw experience. Above all he celebrates Osborne's cross-grained vitali ...

His biography is surely a model of its kind: tightly written, vivid, witty, knowledgeable and with a seamless, and often moving, interweaving of the past and present

An enjoyable, exhaustive, well-researched and highly readable biography

[Heilpern] writes with infectious verve, championing the plays against carpers and cavillers, and showing how close they were to their creator's raw experience. Above all he celebrates Osborne's cross-grained vitali ...

His biography is surely a model of its kind: tightly written, vivid, witty, knowledgeable and with a seamless, and often moving, interweaving of the past and present

An enjoyable, exhaustive, well-researched and highly readable biography

[Heilpern] writes with infectious verve, championing the plays against carpers and cavillers, and showing how close they were to their creator's raw experience. Above all he celebrates Osborne's cross-grained vitali ...

His biography is surely a model of its kind: tightly written, vivid, witty, knowledgeable and with a seamless, and often moving, interweaving of the past and present

An enjoyable, exhaustive, well-researched and highly readable biography

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