isbn :0-14-002549-9
Penguin paperbacks 1988
Theatrical marriages- glamourous….scandalous…bitchy…brief?
Not my normal type of book, but then what is! An interesting tale of the life of actors when taken to Hereford, to perform the first two plays in a new provincial theater, paid for mainly by a wealthy benefactor.
Full of interesting droll and down right egocentrial actors. A really humourous look at the possibilities of the life of acting in the mid 1960’s (when this book was first published)
Margaret Drabble
Born in 1939, went to a quaker boading school. She won a Major Scholarship to Newham college Cambridge, where she read Englishd, they were later to awarded her an honorary Doctorate in Letters in 2006. She has written numerous other novels, including “The Waterfall” (1969) and the middle ground (1980)
Her Biography’s include : Arnold Bennet, (1974) and Thomas Hardy (1976 – edited) In 1985 she edited the oxford companion to English Literature.
Drabble was married to actor Clive Swift between 1960 and 1975; they have three children. In 1982, she married the writer and biographer Michael Holroyd (now Sir Michael); they live in London and Somerset.
Drabble was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1980 Queen’s Birthday Honours, and she was promoted to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours.
In response to the U.S. invasion of Iraq she wrote an article calling herself anti-American, saying
“My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed me like a disease. It rises in my throat like acid reflux.”
She closed by saying, “Long live the other America, and may this one pass away soon,” referring to the rest of America that did not vote for George W. Bush for President.