Few writers have earned the distinction of having a whole genre of theatre named after them, but the term Pinteresque is one all theatre-lovers - and even those less inclined towards theatre - are familiar with. Harold Pinter, the master of seemingly banal banter, is probably the most influential playwright of his generation and the most important British dramatist of the past 50 years. However, it is the moral dimension of his later work that marks him out as a most worthy recipient of the Nobel Prize.
Initially classified among the playwrights of "the absurd", Pinter went on to develop a purity of style that remains his and his alone. In his plays power-games are at the centre of the action, such as it is, and memories become an obsession. The atmosphere of menace that pervades a Pinter play comes as much from the silent thinking, as from the elliptical dialogue. This supreme command of dialogue has not been confined to the stage: as a screenwriter he has also produced a roll-call of classics including Accident and The Servant.
Harold Pinter's distinctive signature style has been his use of the everyday vernacular in the psychological dramas that are his trademark; dramas in which, as his Nobel citation describes it, "people are at the mercy of each other and pretence crumbles".
Although a Londoner, his links with Ireland are close. The early acting career, which was to nurture his insight into stagecraft, began here in the 1950s when he joined Anew McMaster's touring theatre company, about which he has written memorably and affectionately. Dublin's Gate Theatre and its director Michael Colgan have been to the fore in presenting and championing Pinter's work not only in Ireland but also abroad. The playwright was the centre of a 75th birthday celebration of his literary achievements in recent days - an occasion of spontaneous acclaim by those present in the Gate.
A resolute and outspoken activist and human rights campaigner, Pinter was once described as "a permanent public nuisance, a questioner of accepted truths both in life and on stage". Among writers and artists in Britain, he has been the most vociferous opponent of his country's involvement in the Iraq war. In recent years his work for the stage has become more and more overtly political and preoccupied with totalitarian abuse of the individual. In these evocations of tyrannies of one kind or another, we witness encounters between the powerful and vulnerable, interrogators and interrogated. Like the utterances of many of his stage characters, his Nobel acceptance speech will not be wasteful with words.