Look Back in Anger Look Back in Anger Look Back in Anger (1956) is a realist play written by John Osborne. It focuses on the life and marital struggles of an intelligent and educated but disaffected young man of working class origin, Jimmy Porter, and his equally competent yet impassive upper-middle-class wife Alison. The supporting characters include Cliff Lewis, an amiable Welsh lodger who attempts to keep the peace, and Helena Charles, Alison's snobbish friend. Osborne drew inspiration from his personal life and failing marriage with Pamela Lane while writing "Look Back in Anger", which was his first successful outing as a playwright. The
John Osborne he drifted to the libertarian, unorganized right, considering himself "a radical who hates change". Osborne had many affairs over the course of his life and frequently mistreated his wives and lovers. He was married five times, with all except his final marriage being unhappy unions. His wives and lovers were not always kept apart, either. In his 2006 biography, John Heilpern describes at length a holiday in Valbonne, France, in 1961, that Osborne shared with Tony Richardson, a distraught George Devine, and others. Feigning bafflement over the romantic entanglements of the time, Heilpern writes: In Volume 1 of his autobiography