Honours and awards to Harold Pinter lists (in chronological order) honours, awards, prizes, and honorary degrees received by English playwright Harold Pinter (1930–2008), which often acknowledge his international importance and his reach beyond national and regional boundaries.
Pinter declined a British knighthood in 1996, when it was offered to him on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II by British Prime Minister John Major, then leader of the Conservative Party. Despite his declining it, many in the media (both in the UK and elsewhere) still refer erroneously to Pinter as "Sir Harold Pinter".
In addition to having already been made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1966, he accepted the award of Companion of Honour (CH) for services to Literature from the British monarch in 2002. He was presented the Nobel Prize in Literature in December 2005 and the French Légion d'honneur in January 2007.
He was awarded academic honorary degrees at the University of Leeds, in April 2007 (in person), at which its Humanities faculty processed in full academic garb solely to present the honorary doctorate to Pinter; at the University of Kragujevac, in Serbia; and at the University of Cambridge, in June 2008 (both of the latter in absentia). In December 2007, the British Library announced that it had acquired his literary archive for over £1.1 million (approx. US$2.24 million) on behalf of the British nation.
After having accepted the honorary presidency of the Central School of Speech and Drama, a constituent college of the University of London, in October 2008, he received an honorary fellowship during its honorary degree ceremony, also in absentia, due to ill health, on 10 December 2008, two weeks before his death from cancer on 24 December 2008.
Honours, awards, and prizes
Best Play award for The Caretaker in Evening Standard Theatre Awards, 1960
Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), 1966
Shakespeare Prize (Hamburg), 1970
European Prize for Literature (Vienna), 1973
Pirandello Prize (Palermo), 1980
Giles Cooper Award, 1981
Order of Merit (Chile), 1992
America Award, 1995
The David Cohen Prize, 1995
Honorary fellow of Queen Mary, University of London
Laurence Olivier Special Award, 1996
Molière d'honneur, Paris, in recognition of his life's work, 1997
Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, 1997
BAFTA Fellowship, 1997
Companion of Literature, RSL, 1998
The Critics' Circle Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts, 2000
Brianza Poetry Prize (Italy), 2000
South Bank Show Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts, 2001
S.T. Dupont Golden PEN Award, 2001 for a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature
"Premio Fiesole ai Maestri del Cinema", Italy, 2001
World Leaders Award (World Leaders: A Festival of Creative Genius, Toronto), 2001
Hermann Kesten Prize for outstanding commitment on behalf of persecuted and imprisoned writers, awarded by German PEN (Berlin), 2001
Companion of Honour (CH) for services to Literature, 2002
Diploma ad Honorem, Teatro Filodrammatici (Milan), 2004
Evening Standard Awards, 50th Anniversary - Special Award, 2004
Wilfred Owen Poetry Prize, 2005
Franz Kafka Prize, 2005
Nobel Prize in Literature, 2005
Europe Theatre Prize, 2006
Serbian Foundation Prize, 2006
St. George Plaque of the City of Kragujevac, 2006
Legion d'honneur, France, 2007
University of Reading, 1970
University of Birmingham, 1971
University of Glasgow, 1974
University of East Anglia, 1974
University of Stirling, 1979
Brown University, 1982
University of Hull, 1986
University of Sussex, 1990
University of East London, 1994
University of Sofia, 1995
University of Bristol, 1998
Goldsmiths, University of London, 1999
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 2000
University of Florence, 2001
University of Turin, 2002
National University of Ireland, 2004
University of Leeds, 2007
University of Kragujevac, 2008
University of Cambridge, 2008
Central School of Speech and Drama, 2008
