KOPS, BERNARD

KOPS, BERNARD (1926– ), English playwright, born in the East End of London. His searingly frank autobiography, The World Is a Wedding (1963), portrays his early home life. After World War II, he held a succession of menial jobs in factories and hotels and made first, tentative attempts at acting and writing songs and verse. Under the influence of the postwar Bohemian society of Soho, he finally began his literary career. He received an award from the Arts Council for his first notable play, The Hamlet of Stepney Green (1959). Often grouped with the "angry young men" in English literature after World War II, Kops had a special lyrical pathos of his own, as in his portrayal of the dying fathers who are the central characters in two of his best-known works, Hamlet… and Yes from No-Man's Land (1965). In the latter, a novel describing a London Jewish family with East End roots, virtually the entire gamut of modern Jewish experience is touched upon, from memories of the Holocaust and personal involvement with Israel, to intermarriage and alienation. His By the Waters of Whitechapel (1969) had its setting in the residual Jewish community of London's East End. Kops was resident dramatist at the Old Vic in 1958. His plays include The Dream of Peter Mann (1960) and Enter Solly Gold (1961). Both his style and his social philosophy are reminiscent of Berthold Brecht, and like him, he is given to fantasy and extravagance. Kops's poetry includes the volume Erica, Let Me Read You Something (1967). In addition to The World Is a Wedding, he wrote several other volumes of autobiography, including Shalom Bomb (2000). (Shulamit Nardi)