English drama the stage. Again In the 1950s, the absurdist play "Waiting for Godot" (1955) (originally "En attendant Godot", 1952), by the French resident, Irishman Samuel Beckett profoundly affected British drama. The Theatre of the Absurd influenced Harold Pinter (1930-2008), (The Birthday Party, 1958), whose works are often characterised by menace or claustrophobia. Beckett also influenced Tom Stoppard (1937-) ("Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead",1966). Stoppard's works are, however, also notable for their high-spirited wit and the great range of intellectual issues which he tackles in different plays. Both Pinter and Stoppard continued to have new plays produced into the 1990s. Michael Frayn
Nobel Prize in Literature Scandinavian lecture tour suggesting that Hammarskjöld was, like Auden, homosexual. In 1962, John Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature. The selection was heavily criticized, and described as "one of the Academy's biggest mistakes" in one Swedish newspaper. "The New York Times" asked why the Nobel committee gave the award to an author whose "limited talent is, in his best books, watered down by tenth-rate philosophising", adding, "we think it interesting that the laurel was not awarded to a writer ... whose significance, influence and sheer body of work had already made a more profound impression on the literature of