John Osborne, the original Angry Young Man, shocked and transformed British theater in the 1950s with his play Look Back in Anger. This startling biography-the first to draw on the secret notebooks in which he recorded his anguish and depression-reveals the notorious rebel in all his heartrending complexity.

Through a working-class childhood and five marriages, Osborne led a tumultuous life. An impossible father, he threw his teenage daughter out of the house and never spoke to her again. His last written words were I have sinned. Theater critic John Heilpern’s detailed portrait, including interviews with Osborne’s daughter, scores of friends and enemies, and his alleged male lover, shows us a contradictory genius-an ogre with charm, a radical who hated change, and above all, a defiant individualist.