The best of Kenneth Tynan's theatre criticism, selected and edited by his biographer Dominic Shellard – with a foreword by Tom Stoppard.
This volume is an edited selection of theatre criticism by one of the most significant and influential writers on British theatre. Spanning the years 1944 to 1965, it includes all of Tynan's major theatre reviews and articles written for the Evening Standard, the Daily Sketch and the Observer.
It also includes the text of his substantial 1964 speech to the Royal Society of Arts, setting out his vision for the National Theatre.
Tynan's writings on theatre, according to eminent theatre historian Dominic Shellard, influenced the evolution of the whole of post-war theatre in Britain. And, with their characteristic mix of hyperbole, irreverence and prescience, they remain brilliantly entertaining today.
'You can open this book on almost any page and come across a phrase or a vignette which is the next best thing to having been there' Tom Stoppard, from his Foreword
عن المؤلف
Playwright Sir Tom Stoppard was born Tomás Straüssler on 3 July 1937 in Zlín, Czechoslovakia. He grew up in Singapore and India during the Second World War and moved to England in 1946 with his mother and stepfather, his own father having been killed in Singapore. He began writing plays for radio and television, including The Dissolution of Dominic Boot (1964), A Walk on the Water, televised in 1963, The Stand-Ins, later revised as The Real Inspector Hound (1968), and Albert’s Bridge (1968) was first broadcast by BBC Radio in 1967.
Other stage plays include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967), The Real Thing in 1982, Heroes (2005), Rock ‘n’ Roll (2006) and The Hard Problem (2015). His trilogy of plays set in 19th century Russia, The Coast of Utopia, was first staged at the National Theatre in 2002.
Tom Stoppard was knighted in 1997. He lives in London.