Tynan, Kenneth Peacock

Tynan, Kenneth Peacock

(tī`nən), 1927–80, English drama critic, author, and theatrical executive, b. Birmingham, England. During the 1950s, while writing for The Observer, Tynan was widely regarded as Britain's most brilliant, insightful, and influential drama critic. He espoused a new theatrical realism best exemplified in the works of the angry young menangry young men,
term applied to a group of English writers of the 1950s whose heroes share certain rebellious and critical attitudes toward society. This phrase, which was originally taken from the title of Leslie Allen Paul's autobiography, Angry Young Man
..... Click the link for more information.
. For a decade (1963–73) he was literary manager of the National Theatre of Great Britain. Tynan's last years, spent in Los Angeles, were filled with disappointment and unhappiness and were artistically enlivened primarily by a series of lengthy profiles he wrote for the New Yorker. Among his books are Curtains (1961) and Show People: Profiles in Entertainment (1979).

Bibliography

See his letters, ed. by K. Tynan, his wife (1998); his diaries, ed. by J. Lahr (2001); biography by K. Tynan (1987); memoir by T. Tynan, his daughter (2016).