The son of a Russian refugee father and a Hungarian mother, Arnold Wesker was born in 1932 in the East End of London. After a state school education, he was first apprenticed to a furniture maker, and became in turn a bookseller's assistant, a farm labourer, a kitchen porter, and a pastry cook, with a spell in the RAF before turning to playwriting while attending a school of film technique. Along with John Osborne and Harold Pinter, Wesker was part of the explosion of theatrical talent in the late 50s that revolutionized playwriting in Britain. His autobiography is a personal history from the inside of modern British theatre.