Kingsley Amis, John Braine, Shelagh Delaney, Arnold Wesker, James Aldridge

John James Osborne

John James Osborne is a British playwright and film producer whose Look Back in Anger (performed in 1956) initiated a new move in British drama toward what critics called “kitchen-sink” drama, transformed English theatre and made him known as the first of the “Angry Young Men”.

Although the form of the play was not revolutionary, its content was unexpected. On stage for the first time were the 20- to 30-year-olds of Great Britain who had not participated in World War II and found its aftermath shabby and lacking in promise. The hero, Jimmy Porter is the son of a worker. Coming from a poor background he graduated from a red-brick university and through this he reached an uncomfortably marginal position on the border of the middle class from which he can see the traditional possessors of privilege holding the better jobs and threatening his upward climb. Intelligent, well-bred, he could have a well-paid job, but trade markets didn’t want people like him. Jimmy Porter continues to work in a street-market. He can’t be satisfied with such a job. He hates the establishment that makes him lead such life. He doesn’t know what to do. Because of this anger he tortures his wife, becomes a family tyrant and vents his rage on his middle-class wife and her middle-class friend. No solution is proposed for Porter's frustrations, but Osborne makes the audience feel them acutely.

Osborne's work transformed British theatre. He helped to make it artistically respected again, throwing off the formal constraints of the former generation, and turning our attention once more to language, theatrical rhetoric, and emotional intensity. He saw theatre as a weapon with which ordinary people could break down the class barriers and that he had a 'beholden duty to kick against the pricks'. He wanted his plays to be a reminder of real pleasures and real pains.

It was Kingsley Amis’s comicnovel Lucky Jim, (1954) a bitingly satirical story of an unheroic young college instructor Jim Dixon, that reflected the angry protest and discontent and also won the Somerset Maugham Award. The novel satirizes the high-brow academic set of a redbrick university, seen through the eyes of its hero as he tries to make his way as a young lecturer of history. The author’s attitude to the hero is both sympathetic and mocking. It shows a new generation, a new spirit. The book influenced a number of British playwrights and novelists.

Hurry on Down by John Wain depicts a very similar character, a university graduate who had to work as a window-cleaner.

John Braine’s Room at the Top ( 1957) and Life at the Top tell the story of the rise of an ambitious young man of humble origins and the struggles he faces in post-war Britain to realise his ambitions.

Shelagh Delaney, is a British playwright of Irish descent, best known for her debut work, A Taste Of Honey, written at the age of 19. One of the "kitchen sink" plays that at the time were revolutionising English theatre, it confronts a range of social issues — single motherhood, race, sexuality — from a female point-of-view and with frankness, both unusual for 1950s Britain. The play and its film adaptation were influential in changing the public's attitude towards art and society.

Arnold Wesker is a prolific British dramatist also known for his contributions to kitchen sink drama, especially for his politically and socially engaged trilogy, Chicken Soup with Barley [1958], Roots [1959], and I'm Talking About Jerusalem [1960]. He is the author of 42 plays.

The “angry young men” disappeared from the English literary scene in the late 50s. Each writer went his own way. Some of them became reconciled with the existing world, others followed the realistic method enriching and improving their artistic mastery.

The deep questioning of social changes and ideas, the prevailing concern with new dilemmas was best expressed in post-war literature. The novel continued to be the dominant genre and many writers were engaged in an attempt to depict the post-war world in realistic colors. Among them were the works of James Aldridge. In his novels and short stories problems of war and peace, of national movements and international relationships are treated with remarkable honesty and courage. His first novel was Signed with Their Honour (1943) which was followed by The Sea Eagle (1944). Both are dedicated to the struggle of the Greek people against the fascist powers.

The name of James Aldridge is inseparable from the most progressive tendency in post-war English literature – that of the anticolonial novel. Aldridge’s The Diplomat (1949) is one of his best works. James Aldridge, Basil Davidson, Desmond Stewart, Norman Lewis and others in their works protested against colonialism and oppression, against British imperialism.

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