Pinter

Early life and education

Pinter was born on 10 October 1930, in Hackney, east London, the only child of British Jewish parents of Eastern European descent. His father, Hyman "Jack" Pinter was a ladies' tailor, and his mother, Frances (née Moskowitz) was a housewife. Hackney Council lists H. Pinter an A.R.P. Warden as a Master Taylor in a protected occupation, and assigned to Clapton's Post 14. Pinter believed an aunt's erroneous view that the family was Sephardic and had fled the Spanish Inquisition; thus, for his early poems, Pinter used the pseudonym Pinta and at other times used variations such as da Pinto. Later research by Lady Antonia Fraser, Pinter's second wife, revealed the legend to be apocryphal; three of Pinter's grandparents came from Poland and the fourth from Odesa, so the family was Ashkenazic.