Peter Shaffer

Sir Peter Shaffer (15 May 1926 – 6 June 2016) was a British playwright and screenwriter renowned for his psychologically probing dramas that explored themes of faith, identity, and human passion.

Born in Liverpool, England, to Jewish parents, Shaffer was the identical twin brother of fellow playwright Anthony Shaffer (1926–2001), with whom he shared a lifelong bond and occasional professional comparisons. He attended St Paul's School in London and later studied history at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in 1950. During World War II, as a teenager, he served as a Bevin Boy, working in coal mines as part of the national war effort, an experience that later influenced his interest in human resilience and conflict.

Peter Shaffer was born on 15 May 1926 in Liverpool, England, to a middle-class Jewish family of Orthodox heritage that profoundly shaped his early cultural identity. His parents were Jack Shaffer, an estate agent, and Reka Shaffer, a portrait painter whose artistic pursuits contributed to a creative household atmosphere. He was the identical twin brother of Anthony Shaffer, who was born five minutes before him on the same day, with whom he later briefly collaborated on novels under a pseudonym.

The family's Jewish traditions, including Shaffer's bar mitzvah, instilled a sense of ritual and community, though he later expressed ambivalence toward imposed religious beliefs, viewing them as potentially stifling to individual exploration. In 1936, when Shaffer was ten, the family relocated to London, transitioning from Liverpool's middle-class neighborhood to the capital's vibrant but precarious environment.

Shaffer was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Liverpool, providing a cultural foundation that shaped his early intellectual environment. During his adolescence, following the family's relocation to London in 1936, he attended the Hall School in Hampstead and St Paul's School.