Author
All is Fortune, which draws on my lifelong experience of the theatre, is my second book of fiction. The first was Sent Away, a novel for young adults, which was about the scandal of children being sent out to Australia, Canada and South Africa during the twentieth century. Otherwise I have concentrated on non-fiction, especially theatre.
As a theatre historian and biographer I have written acclaimed biographies of the actors John Gielgud and Sybil Thorndike. My book The Coming of Godot: A Short History of a Masterpiece was nominated for the 2005 Theatre Book Prize. My two most recent theatre books are Performing King Lear and Performing Hamlet, published by Bloomsbury in their Arden Shakespeare series. I have also written Don’t You Know There’s a War On? Voices from the Home Front, an oral history of the second world war.
During this time I have been the editor of the National Theatre’s magazine StageWrite and programme editor at the Old Vic theatre. I am also a regular compiler of theatre entries for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. I have written a stage play about Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood, and a radio drama about the stormy relationship between Bernard Shaw and the celebrated actress Mrs Patrick Campbell.
I have two sons, and live in Putney in south-west London with my partner, the playwright Lesley Bruce.
