John Osborne grave (12th December
1929 to 24th December 1994)
John was one of Britain’s most successful playwrights and
completed about 40 plays. The success of his 1956 play Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre. Though he was born
in suburbia in London he lived, died and was buried in rural Shropshire. Here I
am at his grave. I also found his home where he finally conked out.
From
18 years old he was an actor and toured theatres, a helpful apprenticeship for
his future career. He was just 20 when he wrote his first play. It was largely
forgotten as were his first seven plays. His eighth one was Look Back in Anger which he wrote
sitting in a deck chair on Morecambe pier in 17 days. It became so phenomenally
successful it meant everything he wrote thereon would be taken seriously and
probably staged. Over the next 40 years he’d go on to be a commercially
successful writer of plays and films, changing the world of theatre by
reminding audiences of real pleasures and real pains and showing the short
connection between the mind and heart. He spewed vile from the gut about the
state of Britain - underclass, marriage, sex. I first heard of him when I saw
the television version of The Entertainer.
Acting never left him and his appeared in a few films (menacing gangster Cyril
Kinnear in Get Carter.) He was even
in Flash Gordon.
His
private life was messy and his vocal, irreverent personality helped propel him
through four failed marriages, all marred by betrayal, jealousy and even violence.
All the wives were intelligent independent women. He spent his final years
living in a large gentleman’s residence in Shropshire which his fifth wife,
finally finding peaceful compatibility. He was a multi-millionaire and lived as
a country squire with beautiful bucolic rolling in every direction. Sadly it
wasn’t for long and died here of heart failure and diabetes-related
complications on Christmas Eve in 1994 aged 65
Grave
He’s
buried at the top of the street in the quaint and quiet village called Clun.
There’s a wide stream, stone bridge, café, bakers, post office. Occasionally a
car drove by. I walked up the hill to St George’s churchyard and found its
insides as charming as its outsides. A sign on the door asked people to close
it to prevent swallows flying inside. Portions of the graveyard were overgrown
but the grass was short where the famous playwright lies. It’s a plain
headstone but not out of place with the older ornate ones. Next to him lies his
final wife of seventeen years who brought him much-needed quietude.
Sometimes
I reach a grave not knowing that one day I'd get close to a person whose books
I read as an impressionable teenager. At school I can remember reading John’s
two autobiographies A Better Class of
Person and Almost a Gentleman. He
unclothed himself in a way unknown to me before - they're some of the most
frank autobiographies I’ve read.
His final home
I
found his home about two miles from Clun village in unspoilt countryside. It's
up a long drive and it was here where he enjoyed a few domestically-calmer
years. It's now The John Osborne Arvon Centre - a retreat for writers who want
to mix with others and hopefully draw some of John's magic out of the walls and
into their fountain pens. Thankfully nobody came out to wonder what all the
saluting was about. I had a meander in the gardens which were a blaze of colour
thanks to some well-planted wild flower seeds. Round the side I saw how
capacious the building was by its depth. It was once a gentleman's residence
surrounded by 26 acres of woodland but now it houses 16 bedrooms for people
paying to complete writing courses. I did a salute and left.
