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A Man for All Seasons Author Biography

RobertBoltled alife very different from his sixteenth-century hero. After what he calls a "gloomy" childhood and a poor academic career, he spent a mind-opening year at the University before being recruited into the British army. A committed Marxist who considered the working class "morally and aesthetically beautiful" and Ascot (his emblem of the elite) "overprivileged, ugly, and pretentious," he joined the Communist Party in 1942, but quit after five years, disillusioned with the Party's inability to live up to his absolutist ideals (Hayman 10). Upon returning from service in World War II, he completed his university studies and earned a teaching diploma. Then followed eight years of school teaching. Bolt's first theatrical work, a children's nativity play, resulted in "an astonishing turning point" in his life. He made a conscious decision to make play writing his avocation and enjoyed his first success with Flowering Cherry in 1957. He wrote a...
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