John Arden at an 80th birthday tribute in 2010.
John Arden, who died on 28 March at the age of 81, was one of that generation of dramatists, novelists, film-makers and critics who transformed cultural life in Britain in the late 1950s and 1960s. They included, among others, fellow dramatists John Osborne, Shelagh Delaney, Harold Pinter, Arnold Wesker and Brendan Behan; the theatre directors Joan Littlewood and William Gaskill; poets such as Christopher Logue…