The first publication of Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita («Ма́стер и Маргари́та»), in the form left at the author's death in 1940, concludes in the magazine Moskva, although censored portions circulate only in samizdat in the Soviet Union. It is first published in book form this year, by the YMCA Press in Paris.
August 9 – The English playwright Joe Orton (aged 34) is battered to death by his partner, Kenneth Halliwell, who commits suicide in their north London home shortly after.[1] Orton has completed work on a film script, Up Against It, for The Beatles (unproduced).