The death of Harold Pinter on 24 December 2008, at the age of seventy-eight, has prompted an inevitable slew of respectful obituaries, and the facts about his life and opinions are available in plenty. Here, we print two personal recollections of Pinter's early years – from Charles Marowitz, who, as an editor of Encore magazine, saw The Birthday Party into print in 1959 while the play was still enduring critical scorn, and Simon Trussler, co-editor of NTQ, who published one of the first studies of Pinter's plays, and, with Marowitz, edited Theatre at Work (Methuen, 1967), which included the earliest lengthy interview with the playwright.