Short answers, pulled from the story.
Jean Anouilh is best known for his 1944 production of Antigone, adapted from Sophocles, which was performed in German-occupied Paris without censorship but was widely understood by French audiences as a political parable about the Resistance and collaboration.
Jean Anouilh was born on the 23rd of June 1910 in Cérisole, a small village on the outskirts of Bordeaux, France. He had Basque ancestry.
Anouilh grouped his plays by dominant tone and published them in collected volumes. His categories included pièces noires (black plays, tragic dramas), pièces roses (pink plays, fantasy comedies), pièces brillantes (brilliant plays, witty and aristocratic), pièces grinçantes (grating plays, darkly funny), pièces costumées (costume plays set in historical periods), and pièces secrètes (secret dramas, his late metatheatrical works).
Some critics accused Anouilh of potential Nazi sympathy because he lived and worked in Paris throughout the German occupation and refused to take political sides. The controversy intensified after he signed a petition for clemency for the writer Robert Brasillach, who was executed by firing squad in February 1945 for Nazi collaboration. Anouilh declined to publicly comment on his political views throughout his life.
In 1970 Anouilh received the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. In 1980 he became the first recipient of the Grand Prix du Théâtre de l'Académie française. Nobel Prize records opened in 2012 revealed he had been on a shortlist for the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, which was ultimately awarded to John Steinbeck.
Becket depicts Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, defending the church against Henry II of England, the monarch who had appointed him to the position and who was also his friend. Anouilh classified it as a pièces costumées, a costume play requiring a protagonist seeking a moral path in a world of corruption. The play was adapted into a 1964 film with Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton.