Until 1968, all new plays had to be licensed by the Lord Chamberlain before performance, and the Chamberlain's office retained a copy of every play. ‘Umbrellas’ was originally part of a revue entitled ‘You, Me and the Gatepost’, which was licensed by the Lord Chamberlain on 24th June 1960 and performed at Nottingham Playhouse on the 27th of that month. The censors approved performance without any cuts, and identified ‘an excellent entertainment, containing the best of all the fashionable “off-beat” writers including John Mortimer, Anne Jellicoe, David Campton, N F Simpson, Harold Pinter and Shelagh Delaney...’.

‘Umbrellas’ is an early example of the many sketches that Pinter wrote throughout his career. Like the initial drafts of many of his later works, it takes the form of a dialogue between A and B. In this case the characters are two sunbathing gentlemen who embark on a typically enigmatic discussion about umbrellas, the true friend of any English gentleman (particularly when it’s raining). In the script, Pinter designated a characteristic long pause after every line, giving the short sketch a running time of around ten minutes.

The Lord Chamberlain’s collection not only contains the script for the revue, but also correspondence and the reader’s report. The sketch has been hitherto unknown to Pinter researchers and had lain undiscovered in the Lord Chamberlain’s collection as the list of plays submitted for licence does not name the authors of revue-style entertainment. It is probable that Pinter’s script would have remained undiscovered had it not been for the eagle eyes of Ian Greaves who was researching the playwright Norman Frederick Simpson, whose papers were also acquired by the Library.

In 2007 the British Library acquired Pinter’s archive comprising over one hundred and fifty boxes of manuscripts, scrapbooks, letters, photographs, programmes, and emails. This extensive collection of correspondence encompassed the personal, professional and political aspects of the writer, whose career has covered directing, acting, screenwriting, poetry and journalism, as well as his original work for the theatre. This new discovery gives scholars another glimpse into the playwright's work.

Jamie Andrews, Head of English and Drama at the British Library claims: “Discovering this previously unknown work not only underlines the richness of the British Library's Lord Chamberlain's theatre collection, but also offers an exciting and important opportunity for all lovers and scholars of Pinter to study a piece of writing that even the writer himself had not retained."

ENDS