Two deaths..

... of very important people in my life. The first, Eartha Kitt, whose voice and appearance gave me, as a prepubescent boy, the first hint of the power and beauty of desire.








And finally, with thanks to Aspasia of La Libertine's Salon for bringing this to my attention:



The second, playwright Harold Pinter, who brilliantly portrayed the shadow of hidden desires within the silences of everyday discourse and who remained to his death a fierce opponent of tyranny


It was not until they died that I realised how important they had been to my development. I cannot remember the first time I heard Eartha Kitt on the radio but I do remember how she awoke a yearning that I could neither articulate nor understand but knew to be wonderful. Harold Pinter's work, "The Caretaker" was a set text in school in the early sixties and I still remember the thrill that I felt reading it - and even more, the thrill of seeing "The Homecoming" performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre.

Many years ago, I stopped reading modern plays. Now, I feel that I would like to start again.