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John Osborne (1929–1994) was born in Fulham, west London, to Thomas Osborne and his wife Nellie Osborne née Grove. He idolised his father, a commercial artist and advertising copywriter, but despised his cockney barmaid mother. He grew up in suburban Surrey and was educated at a minor public school in Devon, from which he was expelled at the age of 15 for hitting the headmaster.

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John Osborne (1929–1994) was born in Fulham, west London, to Thomas Osborne and his wife Nellie Osborne née Grove. He idolised his father, a commercial artist and advertising copywriter, but despised his cockney barmaid mother. He grew up in suburban Surrey and was educated at a minor public school in Devon, from which he was expelled at the age of 15 for hitting the headmaster.

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In 1949 Osborne co-wrote his first play, The Devil Inside Him, with his married lover Stella Linden. He described it as a ‘melodrama about a poetic Welsh loon’ who murders a girl when he realises that she is trying to frame him for sexual assault. Devil was briefly performed in Huddersfield in 1950 but was largely forgotten about during Osborne’s lifetime, as were six other early plays (only one of which was produced).

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Osborne’s second play for the Royal Court was The Entertainer (1957), which starred Laurence Olivier as faded music hall star Archie Rice. Like Look Back in Anger, it mourns the passing of English traditions and the British Empire. His third play to be produced by the Court, Epitaph for George Dillon (1958), was written prior to Look Back in Anger. George Dillon is a struggling actor-playwright, a failure and a sell-out; he is now often seen as a prototype for Jimmy Porter.

These three successful Royal Court productions were followed by a spectacular flop: a West End musical called The World of Paul Slickey (1959) which satirised the tabloid press and upper-class society. Osborne’s reputation was restored with Luther in 1961, a play about the 16th-century German Protestant reformer Martin Luther which chronicles his struggle with faith. It seemed surprising subject matter for a man who had railed against religion and the Church, but Osborne had always been beset by fear and guilt and in later life he joined the Church of England. The play impressed critics and audiences alike and won Osborne a Tony award on Broadway.

Luther was followed by Inadmissable Evidence (1964), regarded by some as Osborne’s best play. Solicitor Bill Maitland is a typical Osborne anti-hero: a paranoid, self-hating man going through a mid-life crisis. The drama takes place in a courtroom dreamscape where Maitland presents evidence of his failings and disappointments. The style of the play is innovative, using intercut monologues to signal the dissociative, abstract quality of the piece. Three years on, when Osborne was struggling with his own nervous breakdown, he looked back on the play as ‘an act of self-prophecy’.

Next came A Patriot For Me, which premiered in 1965. The play is based on the true story of the gay Austro-Hungarian spy Alfred Redl, who was blackmailed by Russia for concealing his sexuality. It was refused a licence by the Lord Chamberlain because of its sexual permissiveness, forcing the Royal Court Theatre to become a private members’ club in order to stage the play. As a result of the outcry caused by the Lord Chamberlain’s decision, Osborne was invited to give evidence to the parliamentary committee which ultimately brought about the end of theatrical censorship in 1968.

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Osborne married five times. The relationships were marred by betrayal, jealousy and violence; it was not until he met his fifth wife, Helen Dawson, that he found domestic happiness and relative peace. Despite his many female lovers, Osborne’s camp demeanour and close friendships with gay men sparked rumours about his sexuality (when fellow playwright Noël Coward asked him, ‘How queer are you?’ Osborne famously quipped, ‘About 20 per cent.’). Though he denied ever having had sex with a man, homosexuality interested him and was a theme he explored in his writing. Until the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967 he saw it as a heroic and admirably subversive way to be; as the law began to change his sympathy waned.

Osborne’s outspoken vigour mellowed little over the years. His political viewpoint shifted away from left-wing causes to a more right-wing libertarian stance. He spent his final years in Shropshire, where he enjoyed posing as a country squire and terrorising the local vicar with threats to withdraw covenant funding from the parish church. He died of heart failure and diabetes-related complications on 24 December 1994.

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He died in 1994 at the age of sixty-five.