A Man For All Seasons

''By Robert Bolt''

Early Childhood

Robert Bolt was born in 1924 in Manchester. He was the son of a small shopkeeper; his father kept a furniture shop. He had one elder brother. He was brought up as a Methodist. He says that he still has a rather Puritan outlook on enjoyment, needing a moral reason for it to obtain peace of mind.

He did not have a happy childhood, although his parents were loving and not unreasonably strict. According to his own account, he became rebellious, idle and even delinquent, and the despair of teachers and parents. His parents sent him to Manchester Grammar School, one of the best day-schools in the country. But he was a failure at school and took School Certificate twice, doing worse at the second attempt. Even then, however, he was always good at English, on the critical and appreciative side, and always writing, though oddly enough not plays.

He did not make full use of the opportunities at school, and on leaving school he went into an Insurance Office, which he loathed. He uses this loathing and his own consequent inefficiency in the creation of Jim Cherry in Flowering Cherry.

But later on, he got admission to Manchester University, where he bagged a degree in history.

Early Career

University in Manchester proved a running point in his life. For the first time he began to find life good, and his tensions were released. He became a communist, an allegiance which continued,

though gradually eroded, all through the war. During the war he served in the Royal Air Force, and later in the army, gaining commission and visiting South Africa and West Africa. These experiences brought a revelation of beauty and enjoyment to him, and the return in Manchester shocked him into a realization of ugliness. He took his degree in History, left Manchester and has never returned. He became a teacher, and was asked to write a Nativity Play. As soon as he began to write dialogue, he realized that this was the form he had been looking for. He became a school-master at Exeter University, first at a village school in Devon and then for seven years as Head of the English Department at Millfield. During this period, he wrote a dozen radio plays which were broadcast, and he did some producing. This was in 1950. He continued to teach and to write radio plays. Later Life Bolt had by now left the Communist Party and was persuaded by Lord Russell to join the "Committee of a Hundred" to organize demonstrations against the atomic bomb. He did not like the idea of breaking the law, but decided to do so, and was put in prison for refusing to be bound over to keep the peace. But he was at this time in the middle of writing the script for the film Lawrence of Arabia, and the frantic producer persuaded him to agree to be bound over, and come out after only a fortnight. This Bolt has always been ashamed of-so much so that he gave away all the money he received from the firm. The situation is not dissimilar to that of Thomas More, who remained in prison because he would not save himself by a promise, and perhaps some of Robert Bolt's own agonizing can be recognized in the play, as can his best respect for the law. Despite has Christian upbringing. Bolt finds that he cannot believe in a transcendental reality. This was what helped to get him out of the Communist Party, for he found it impossible to believe in a perfect society; all is relative. Nevertheless, he is a writer obsessed with moral issues, and admits that he seems "naturally constituted to be religious." He has a sense of responsibility which "only makes sense on the assumption that there is somebody to whorn I am responsible."

Personal Life

Bolt was married four times, twice to British actress Sarah Miles. His first wife was Celia Ann "Jo" Roberts, by whom he had three children; they divorced in 1963. He was married to Miles from 1967 until 1976; Bolt had his fourth child, Thomas, with Miles. In the early 1980s, he had a short-lived third marriage, to Ann Queensberry, before remarrying Sarah Miles in 1988, with whom he remained until his death in 1995.

He had four children: Sally (who died in a car crash in 1982), Ben (who later became a film and television director), Joanna, and Tom

Death

Bolt suffered a heart attack and a stroke that left him paralysed in 1979. He died aged 70, in Petersfield, Hampshire, England, following a long illness.