Featured on The Book Show on Sky Arts on 15 October 2009.

Anyone with the vaguest interest in the theatre will find this a fascinating insight in to that world told by those who live and breathe it. Some of our best loved actors and writers share their  thoughts with the former director of the National Theatre.

Synopsis

Forty engagingly candid interviews with leading theatre people, offering rare insights 'behind the scenes'.

Shortly after he left the directorship of the National Theatre, Richard Eyre embarked on a series of interviews with people who had played a significant part in making and influencing the theatre of the second half of the twentieth century. Forty of these interviews—threaded through with Eyre’s own commentary—are published here for the first time.

John Gielgud • Peter Brook • Margaret 'Percy' Harris • Peter Hall • Ian McKellen • Judi Dench • Trevor Nunn • Vanessa Redgrave • Fiona Shaw • Liam Neeson • Stephen Rea • Stephen Sondheim • Arthur Laurents • Arthur Miller • August Wilson • Jason Robards • Kim Hunter • Tony Kushner • Luise Rainer • Alan Bennett • Harold Pinter • Tom Stoppard • David Hare • Jocelyn Herbert • William Gaskill • Arnold Wesker • Peter Gill • Christopher Hampton • Peter Shaffer • Frith Banbury • Alan Ayckbourn • John Bury • Victor Spinetti • John McGrath • Cameron Mackintosh • Patrick Marber • Steven Berkoff • Deborah Warner • Willem Dafoe • Simon McBurney • Robert Lepage • John Johnston (Britain's last Theatre Censor)

The topics Eyre sets out to cover are Shakespeare; Brecht and Beckett; Ireland and America; the British theatre before and after 1956; and the future...

What emerges is a fascinating account of how theatre is made by the very people who made it. With unrivalled access, Eyre has allowed us to eavesdrop on the stories behind many of the most important productions and performances in the theatre of recent times.

Reviews

'A rich, stimulating treasure trove. Eyre's interviews exactly hit the spot: in revealing themselves, his subjects also give the reader a panoramic view of modern theatre' Michael Billington

'a mine of first-hand theatrical information and insight and, better still, a wonderful compendium of high-grade gossip' Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph

About the Author

Richard Eyre worked for ten years in regional theatre in Leicester, Edinburgh and Nottingham. He was producer of the BBC's Play for Today from 1978 to 1981, and was Artistic Director of the National Theatre from 1988 to 1997. His work since includes a musical and several plays in the West End and on Broadway, and opera at Covent Garden and at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. His film and television work includes The Ploughman's Lunch, Tumbledown, Iris, Notes on a Scandal, and Changing Stages, a six-part look at twentieth-century theatre. He has published three books, including National Service, a journal of his time at the National Theatre. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation