The Rise and Fall of the Royal Shakespeare Company

The Stratford theatre, established by Charles Flower in 1879, revitalised by Barry Jackson and Anthony Quayle in the 1940s and 1950s and radically transformed by Peter Hall into a national theatre company in the 1960s, was one of Britain's most significant cultural achievements, the home of Peggy Ashcroft, Peter Brook, Michel Saint-Denis, John Barton, Harold Pinter, Trevor Nunn, Terry Hands, Adrian Noble and many other leading figures. In this new book, Simon Trowbridge examines the trail-blazing years of innovation and creative achievement under Hall and Nunn, which saw a genuine company of directors, designers and actors revolutionise the performance of Shakespeare. He traces the Stratford theatre's slow rise to this position of prominence and its subsequent relative decline into something more ordinary during the 2000s.