Editing John Osborne (section)

==== Jill Bennett (1968–1977) ====
Osborne had a turbulent nine-year marriage to the actress [[Jill Bennett (British actress)|Jill Bennett]]. Their marriage degenerated into mutual abuse with Bennett insulting Osborne, calling him impotent and homosexual in public as early as 1971.<ref name="Heilpern Guardian" /> Osborne showed similar cruelty towards her, breaching a court order by harassing her with abusive messages after their divorce.<ref>{{harvnb|Heilpern|2006|pp=394-95, 412-13}}.</ref> Bennett committed suicide in 1990 (having expressed suicidal thoughts for decades): some have blamed this on Osborne's treatment of her.<ref name="Heilpern Guardian" /><ref name="Meyers" /> He said of Bennett, "She was the most evil woman I have come across", and showed open contempt for her suicide.<ref>Heilpern writes ({{harvnb|Heilpern|2006|p=443}}) that the second volume of Osborne's [[autobiography]] was ready to go to press at [[Faber and Faber]]. Bennett's suicide freed Osborne from the [[restraining order]] arising from their bitter divorce. He sat down and wrote a new chapter for the book, specifically to excoriate his ex-wife.</ref>

{{quote|She was a woman so demoniacally possessed by Avarice that she died of it… This final, fumbled gesture, after a lifetime of glad-rags borrowings, theft and plagiarism, must have been one of the few original or spontaneous gestures in her loveless life.<ref>{{harvnb|Osborne|1991|p=255}}.</ref>}}

He concluded by stating that his only regret was that he could not "look down upon her open coffin and, like that bird in the [[Book of Tobit]], drop a good, large mess in her eye."<ref>{{harvnb|Osborne|1991|p=259}}.</ref> Reviewing ''Almost a Gentleman'', which contains this passage, [[Hilary Mantel]] commented, "the pious reader may wish to pray, the queasy reader vomit, the prudent reviewer consult the libel laws" (though she did speculate about Osborne's mental health).<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v13/n22/hilary-mantel/looking-back-in-anger|title=Looking Back in Anger|date=21 November 1991|accessdate=14 May 2023|author=Mantel, Hilary|author-link=Hilary Mantel|newspaper=London Review of Books}}</ref> [[Michael Billington (critic)|Michael Billington]] called the attack on Bennett a "vicious assault", though he added, "he must have once loved her a lot to have hated her so much".<ref name="billington" />