Bernard Kops

Bernard Kops (28 November 1926 – 25 February 2024) was a British dramatist, memoirist, poet and novelist.

Early life
Born in the East End of London, the son of Dutch-Jewish immigrants, Kops was evacuated from London in 1939, and recounted that experience in episode two of Thames Television's TV series, The World at War, first broadcast in 1973.

Career
His first play, The Hamlet of Stepney Green, was produced at the Oxford Playhouse in 1957. It is considered to be one of the keystones of the "New Wave" in British 'kitchen sink' drama.

His subsequent plays include Enter Solly Gold (1962), Ezra (1981, about Ezra Pound), Playing Sinatra (1991) and The Dreams of Anne Frank (1992, about Anne Frank). He also wrote extensively for radio and television. His radio play Monster Man (1999) is about the creator of "King Kong", Willis O'Brien.

Kops wrote the television movie script Just One Kid for director/producer John Goldschmidt; the film was broadcast on the ITV Network in 1974, and won a Silver Hugo Award at the Chicago Film Festival. Kops then wrote the television film It's a Lovely Day Tomorrow (1975), about the Bethnal Green tube disaster of 1943, also for John Goldschmidt, and this was nominated for an International Emmy Award for Drama Series.

He published volumes of poetry, autobiography, several novels, and a memoir of the East End, Bernard Kops' East End (2006). He also wrote travelogues, including a series of articles about a trip to the United States (1999) and another about a journey to China (2000), both written for The Guardian.

Personal life and death
In 1975, suffering from drug addiction, Kops made a suicide attempt; he wrote about the incident and his successful journey to sobriety in his second autobiography, Shalom Bomb: Scenes from My Life.

Kops died on 25 February 2024, at the age of 97.

Selected bibliography

 * Awake for Mourning (MacGibbon & Kee), 1958)
 * The Hamlet of Stepney Green (1959)
 * The Dream Of Peter Mann (1960)
 * Motorbike (New English Library, 1962)
 * The World is a Wedding (MacGibbon & Kee, 1963)
 * Yes from No-Man's Land (MacGibbon & Kee, 1965)
 * The Dissent of Dominick Shapiro (MacGibbon & Kee, 1966)
 * By the Waters of Whitechapel (Bodley Head, 1969)
 * The Passionate Past of Gloria Gaye (Secker and Warburg, 1971)
 * For the Record – Poems (Secker and Warburg, 1971)
 * Settle Down Simon Katz (Secker and Warburg)
 * Partners (Secker and Warburg, 1975)
 * On Margate Sands (Secker and Warburg, 1978)
 * Neither Your Honey nor Your Sting: An Offbeat History of the Jews (Robson, 1985)
 * Plays One (Playing Sinatra, The Hamlet of Stepney Green, Ezra) (Oberon Books, 1999)
 * Plays Two (Dreams of Anne Frank, Cafe Zeitgeist, Call in the Night) (Oberon Books, 2000)
 * Plays Three (The Dream of Peter Mann, Enter Solly Gold, Who Shall I Be Tomorrow?) (Oberon Books, 2001)
 * Shalom Bomb: Scenes from My Life (Oberon Books, 2000)
 * Where Do People Go (The Happy Dragons' Press, 2004)
 * Bernard Kops East End (Five Leaves Publications, 2006)
 * This Room in the Sunlight: Collected Poems (David Paul, 2010)
 * The Odyssey of Samuel Glass (David Paul, 2012)
 * Anne Frank's Fragments from Nowhere (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2015)
 * Love, Death and Other Joys (David Paul, 2018)

Literature

 * William Baker and Jeanette Roberts Shumaker: Bernard Kops - fantasist, London Jew, apocalyptic humorist, Madison [u.a.]: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2014, ISBN 978-1-61147-656-9.