Why do writers end up parodying themselves? The late Harold Pinter was a case in point: in the 1950s and 1960s, his voice was fresh, his pauses enigmatic and his style delivered the shock of the new. In the 1970s, he played imaginative games with theatre form; in the 1980s, he discovered politics. By the 1990s, his new plays seemed to be parodies of his own style. The dialogues were too Pinteresque, the pauses risible, the form contrived.