Ronald Harwood has written several favorably reviewed novels, a well-received biography, and many television plays, film scripts, and stage plays. But not until the success of his 1980 play The Dresser, winner of the New Standard and Drama Critics Award for best play of 1980, did he reach a wide audience and become well known in theatrical circles in London and New York.

Born Ronald Horwitz in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1934, the son of Isaac Horwitz and his wife, Isobel Pepper Horwitz, Harwood went to England in 1951 where he spent a year studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Having obtained an introduction to Shakespearean actor Donald Wolfit, he became a student-member of his company at King's Theatre, Hammersmith, in 1953. From 1953 to 1958 he worked and toured for Wolfit as understudy, actor, dresser, and finally business manager. As he writes in the introduction to his biography of Wolfit, "He...