Robert Bolt
| Robert Bolt | |
|---|---|
| Born |
15 August 1924 Sale, Cheshire, England |
| Died | 21 February 1995 (aged 70) Petersfield, Hampshire, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Information | |
| Notable work(s) |
|
| Magnum opus | A Man for All Seasons (1960) |
Robert Oxton Bolt, CBE (August 15, 1924 – February 21, 1995) was an English playwright and a two-time Oscar-winning screenwriter, known for writing the screenplays for Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and A Man for All Seasons, the latter two of which won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.
He was born in Sale, Cheshire. At Manchester Grammar School his affinity for Sir Thomas More first developed. He attended the University of Manchester, and, after wartime service in the RAF (1943–1946), the University of Exeter. For many years he taught English and history at Millfield School and only became a full-time writer at the age of 33 when his play The Flowering Cherry was staged in London in 1958, with Celia Johnson and Ralph Richardson.
Although he was best known for his original play A Man for All Seasons – a depiction of Sir Thomas More's clash with King Henry VIII over his divorce from Catherine of Aragon – which won awards on the stage and in its film version, most of his writing was screenplays for films or television.
Bolt was known for dramatic works that placed their protagonists in tension with the prevailing society. He won great renown for A Man for All Seasons, his first iteration of this theme, but he developed it in his existential script for Lawrence of Arabia (1962). In Lawrence, he succeeded where several before him had failed, at turning T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom into a cogent screenplay by turning the entire book on its head and making it a search for the identity of its author, presenting Lawrence as a misfit both in English and Arab society.
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