[This entry was updated by T. F. Evans (Staffordshire, England) from his entry in the Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, volume 8, pp. 424-445.]

Arnold Wesker was born in Stepney in the East End of London. His father, Joseph Wesker, was a tailor of Russian-Jewish extraction and his mother, Leah Perlmutter Wesker, was Hungarian. Stepney is in a poor part of the city, and Wesker's mother helped to augment the family income by doing odd jobs as a kitchen worker. Wesker has said that he enjoyed the life of the East End. The family's poverty did not worry him, and he found a sense of warmth in the community. His parents quarrelled, but there were street games with friends, and, as he grew up, he realized that the social feeling in the family (aunts and a grandmother lived next door) and the sense of concern for political matters...