sentences:  In October 2008, two months prior to his death on 24 December, Pinter also became honorary president of the Central School of Speech and Drama, a constituent college of the University of London, and received his 20th honorary award, from that institution, on 10 December 2008, in absentia because of illness.In 1986, at an annual convention of the Modern Language Association (MLA), Steven H. Gale, who became the organisation's first president, brought together several American academic scholars to form The Harold Pinter Society, which later became an Allied Organization of the MLA and an Associated Organization of the Midwest Modern Language Association (M/MLA).The Pinter Society is international in membership and scope, according to the masthead of "The Pinter Review" and the Society's "Webpages" (home page).