Harold Pinter archive saved for the nation

The archives of Britain's greatest living playwright, Harold Pinter, have been secured for the nation after the British Museum paid £1.1m to acquire his letters, manuscripts, scrapbooks, programmes and emails. The collection of personal effects, stored in 150 boxes, includes more than 12,000 letters between Pinter and practically every leading theatrical figure of the last 50 years.

Highlights of the archive include the correspondence between the Nobel Laureate and Samuel Beckett, letters to fellow playwrights David Mamet and Arthur Miller, and an unlikely hero-gram from Noel Coward. Coward lauded Pinter for "cheerfully breaking every rule of the theatre that I have been brought up to believe in except the cardinal one of never being boring for a split second."

The acquisition happily bucks a recent trend for the archives of leading British literary figures heading abroad - those of David Hare and Tom Stoppard were purchased by US institutions such as the University of Texas in Austin. Knowing Pinter's views on American foreign policy and the country in general - he told Time Out magazine this year that Hollywood is a "shithouse", sees George Bush as a "mass-murderer" and has compared Bush's regime with that of the Nazis in Germany - it's not surprising to see his archive stay on these shores.

Pinter, 77, surprisingly chipper for a man famously declared dead on Sky News two years ago, said yesterday that he was "delighted that the British Library had purchased the archive" and was "pleased that the archive would be staying in this country".