No Man's Land
No Man's Land

No Man's Land (1974)

No Man's Land

Harold Pinter

Play script

English

One summer's evening, two ageing writers, Hirst and Spooner, meet in a Hampstead pub and continue their drinking into the night at Hirst's stately house nearby. As the pair become increasingly inebriated, and their stories increasingly unbelievable, the lively conversation soon turns into a revealing power game, further complicated by the return home of two sinister younger men.

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Date of Composition: 11 September 1974   Confidence Level  

Linked Works

No Linked works have been added to this work record yet.

Linked Places

Jack Straw's Castle (Type of place: Location (within the fiction))

Jack Straw's Castle, Hampstead

A pub by Hampstead Heath, no longer extant. Hirst meets Spooner here before the opening scene in No Man's Land (1975). The pub is mentioned by name in the play. Hirst's house is therefore given as being situated in North West London.


Chalk Farm (Type of place: Location (within the fiction))

Chalk Farm, London

The character of Spooner hosts poetry readings in a pub in Chalk Farm in No Man's Land, a less well-to-do part of London than Hampstead, where we might assume the play takes place.


Bolsover Street (Type of place: Location (within the fiction))

Bolsover Street, London

Briggs in No Man's Land gives a speech about the difficulties of the one-way system in this part of London. Briggs's directions to Balsover Street bore, and bear, no resemblance to the actual street layout, though there is a Mews or two, a square (Fitzroy), a crescent, and the Post Office Tower in the vicinity.


The Post Office Tower (Type of place: Location (within the fiction))

The BT Tower, London

Used as a landmark by Briggs in his story about the one-way system around Balsover Street, in No Man's Land. Known today at the BT Tower.


Publishers

Eyre Methuen on (3 April 1975)

Characters

Hirst (Age: sixties, Male)

Spooner (Age: sixties, Male)

Foster (Age: thirties, Male)

Briggs (Age: thirties, Male)

Resources

Full text on Drama Online (URL)

Type: Script

External Link: https://www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/plays/no-mans-land-iid-129849

Subscription required

Sources

NT: Live, National Theatre Website

http://ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk/synopsis/ntlout19-no-man-s-land

URL

The summary of the play provided above appears on the theatre's webpage dedicated to promoting the filmed version of the production [accessed 10 November 2017].

William Baker and John C. Ross's biographical history of Harold Pinter's work

William Baker and John C. Ross, Harold Pinter: A Bibliographical History (London: British Library; New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2005)

Academic book

Baker and Ross report that Pinter telephoned Peter Hall to inform him he had completed the play (p. 72). Note: this account differs from Antonia Fraser's, which in her memoir on Pinter, Must You Go?: My Life with Harold Pinter (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2010), puts the date of completion at 01/09.