Peter Brook is one of the most influential directors of our time, whose productions are a byword for imagination, energy and innovation. He was born into a Russian émigré family in London and, after a turbulent time at Oxford University, he veered between directing West End comedy, new work from abroad and opera at Covent Garden. By the 1960s he was moving towards greater experimentation, with controversial works like The Marat/Sade, films like Lord of the Flies,...

In A Time to Speak Out, a collection of strong Jewish voices come together to explore some of the most challenging issues facing diaspora Jews. With articles on such topics as international law, the Holocaust, varieties of Zionism, self-hatred, the multiplicity of Jewish identities, and human rights, these essays provide powerful evidence of the vitality of independent Jewish opinion as well as demonstrating that criticism of Israel has a crucial role to play in the continuing his...

Peter Brook is one of the world's legendary theater directors. His productions are a byword for imagination, energy, and innovation. From his ground-breaking production of Marat/Sade, to his "white box" A Midsummer Night's Dream, to his monumental staging of The Mahabharata and beyond, Brook has always been the pioneer of what a director and a company of actors can conjure out of an empty stage. In this first authoritative biography, arising out of an association...

In Two Minds is the first comprehensive biography of Jonathan Miller – the story of one of post-war Britain's most intriguing polymaths. Descended from immigrants who fled Tsarist anti-Semitism to become shopkeepers in Ireland and London's East End, Miller was born into an intellectual milieu, between Bloomsbury and Harley Street – the son of a novelist and a leading child psychiatrist. Miller trained as adoctor but then forged a career as a stellar comedian and as a world-renowned theatre...

'An impressive achievement' Mail on Sunday'Fascinating' Irish Times'Penetrating and entertaining ... This book is probably as close as we shall get to him [Burton]' LA TimesRichard Burton: star. The roaring boy from the Welsh coal valleys who came to sport on the banks of the old Nile, playing great Antony to Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra.From the West End to Hollywood, from Camelot...

**It is the middle of the Swinging Sixties, and Clive James doesn't have much to show for it. May Week Was In June is the third hilarious, tender instalment of memoir from the iconic author, poet and broadcaster.'Nobody writes like Clive James' – Spectator**Arriving at Cambridge University in a cold October in 1964, the young Clive James has yet to find a footing in the literary world. His move from Sydney and three years of hand-to-mouth existence in Lond...

Alive with insight, delight and Dyer's characteristic irreverence, this book offers a guide around the cultural maze, mapping a route through the worlds of literature, art, photography, music. Across ten years' worth of essays, Working the Room spans the photography of Martin Parr and the paintings of Turner, the writing of Scott Fitzgerald and the criticism of Susan Sontag, and includes extensive personal pieces - 'On Being an Only Child', 'Sacked' and 'Reader's Block' among many...

In 1953, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot premiered at a tiny avant-garde theatre in Paris; within five years, it had been translated into more than twenty languages and seen by more than a million spectators. Its startling popularity marked the emergence of a new type of theatre whose proponents—Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Pinter, and others—shattered dramatic conventions and paid scant attention to psychological realism, while highlighting their characters’ inability to understan...

In these seventeen essays (and one short story) the 2011 Man Booker Prize winner examines British, French and American writers who have meant most to him, as well as the cross-currents and overlappings of their different cultures. From the deceptiveness of Penelope Fitzgerald to the directness of Hemingway, from Kipling's view of France to the French view of Kipling, from the many translations of Madame Bovary to the fabulations of Ford Madox Ford, from the National Treasure Statu...

Di Trevis is a world-renowned director, whose work with Britain’s National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, and directing productions worldwide, has deeply informed her knowledge of the director’s craft.In Being a Director, she draws on a wealth of first-hand experience to present an immersive, engaging and vital insight into the role of a director.The book elegantly blends the personal and the pedagogical, illustrating how the parameters of Time, Space and Motion are es...

The inspiration for the annual Pleasure of Reading PrizeA charming and revealing collection of essays from some of our best-loved writers about the pleasures of reading, with royalties donated to the Give a Book charityIn this delightful collection forty-three acclaimed writers explain what first made them interested in literature, what inspired them to read and what makes them continue to do so. Original contributors include Marga...