Robert Bolt has been characterized by critic John Russell Taylor as a "good, traditional playwright." Unlike his contemporaries during the late 1950s--Harold Pinter, John Osborne, John Arden, and Arnold Wesker--who followed formulas of the theaters of cruelty and of the absurd, Bolt wrote more in the manner of Terence Rattigan. That is to say, he wrote "sensitive, competent acting vehicles" for "a largely middle-class, West-End, theatregoing audience." His distinctiveness is the concern for elegance of language and structure.

Born in the small Lancashire town of Sale, near Manchester, Robert Oxton Bolt is the younger of two sons of Ralph and Leah Binnion Bolt. Bolt's mother taught in a primary school, and his father ran a small shop, where he sold mostly china, glass, and furniture. Bolt has described his early years as a time of "northern nonconformity ... much emphasis on education, social responsibility and progressive politics; a good...