Harold Pinter’s “Blood Sports”: A Precocious Precursor of Some of the Playwright’s Style and Themes

ABSTRACT In 1947 Harold Pinter published wrote a short piece titled “Blood Sports” in the magazine of his London grammar school; it has never since appeared in print. This precocious writing displays a number of significant precursors of the playwright’s later distinctive style, vocabulary, and themes: feral violence, upper-class voyeurism, blood lust, and graphic language.