David Hare

But a rock band's dreams of anarchic rebellion collapse into bitterness and disillusionment. the voice of Sixties counterculture that refuses to die. David Hare's trailblazing play premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 1975. This edition marks its fiftieth-anniversary revival at the Duke of York's Theatre, London, in 2026.

People arguing, that isn't theatre. Little rooms give us no space. Henry Irving believes that theatre is the only thing which matters. Ellen's daughter Edith Craig believes theatre can change society, but her son Edward Gordon Craig dreams only of a theatre free from actors and dialogue.

This visually dramatic encyclopaedia of Ireland’s lighthouses is packed with easy-to-digest facts which effortlessly engage young readers with topics such as science, engineering and history. Inside you will: discover how lighthouses are built, how they work, and how they save lives at sea;learn the meaning behind the different colours that lighthouses are painted;experience what it’s like to live and work in a lighthouse;discover which lighthouse you can visit and explore next;test your knowledge with a lighthouse quiz. For kids hungry for knowledge, this first book in the Gill Illustrated Encyclopedia series is sure to surprise and delight.

The Great Lighthouses of Ireland is a collection of striking images and fascinating stories about the lighthouses around Ireland’s coast and the extraordinary men and women who lived and worked in them. The book, published to accompany the TV series of the same name, has an encyclopaedic range of subjects, including history, biography, engineering and science, art, wildlife and social history. Stories include the raid on the Fastnet by the IRA, Ireland’s nuclear-powered lighthouse and the heroic rescue of the Daunt Rock lightship. With more than 300 stunning images and archive documents, this beautiful book brings to life the romance and history of the lighthouses that inspire such fascination.

'A writing career which is the most consistently adventurous of any British dramatist.' ObserverRecording dizzying changes in culture and politics, this is a powerful compilation of prose and poetry by one of the distinctive thinkers of our time. The elegant essays range from a celebration of Mad Men to a diagnosis of the incoherence of Conservatism in the new century. The poems, in contrast, are private, tender meditations.'Always, there is a breadth and a caustic wit reminiscent of his idol Chekhov.' Spectator'David Hare's great quality has always been his refusal to accept the division between fact and imagination. His creative invention is fired by public realities and in turn he makes those realities feel deeply personal. That same quality is wonderfully at work in his essays and poems. Whether he is writing about Tony Blair or Joan Didion, whether he is writing out of love or rage, evoking the intimate moments of his own life or the great moral questions of our times, he brings his subjects to life with an irresistible immediacy. All the wit, combativeness, energy and edge he has brought to the stage are present here on the page.' Fintan O'Toole'A reliable source of delight.' New Statesman

For forty uninterrupted years, Robert Moses was the most powerful man in New York. Though never elected to office, he manipulated those who were through a mix of guile, charm and intimidation.Motivated at first by a determination to improve the lives of New York City's workers, he created parks, bridges and 627 miles of expressway to connect the people to the great outdoors. But in the 1950s, groups of citizens began to organize against his schemes and against the motor car, campaigning for a very different idea of what a city should be.David Hare's blazing account of a man - played by Ralph Fiennes - whose iron will exposed the weakness of democracy in the face of charismatic conviction, premieres at the Bridge Theatre, London, in March 2022.

Covid-19 seems to be a sort of dirty bomb, thrown into the body to cause havoc.On the same day that the UK government finally made the first of two decisive interventions that led to a conspicuously late lockdown, David Hare contracted Covid-19. Nobody seemed to know much about it then, and many doctors are not altogether sure they know much more today. Suffering a pageant of apparently random symptoms, Hare recalls the delirium of his illness, which mixed with fear, dream, honest medicine and dishonest politics to create a monologue of furious urgency and power.

Should I run? This is the question Pauline Gibson is asking herself. She has spent her adult life as a doctor, the inspiring leader of a campaign for local health provision. When she crosses paths with her old boyfriend, Jack Gould, who has made his way in Labour party politics, she's faced with an agonising decision.What's involved in sacrificing your private life and your peace of mind for something more than a single issue? Does she dare?David Hare was recently described by the Washington Post as 'the premiere political dramatist writing in English.' His explosive new play portrays the history of a twenty year intimate friendship and its public repercussions.David Hare's new play I'm not Running, premieres at the National Theatre, London, in October 2018.

I want to give my country a model of perfection. My country needs cheering up. I'm the man to do it.A man of great passions, John Christie wooed his opera singer wife with a determination befitting a man who won the Military Cross at the Battle of Loos. Now, in 1934, this Etonian science teacher's admiration for the works of Wagner has led him to embark on the construction of an opera house on his Sussex estate. Then, by chance, he hears word of a group of refugees from Nazi Germany who may perhaps deliver his vision of the sublime - assuming they're willing to cast his wife in the lead.David Hare's The Moderate Soprano tells the story of how Glyndebourne, this most English of institutions, derives its character firstly from a woman and secondly from an Austrian and two Germans. The play premiered at Hampstead Theatre in 2015, and opened at the Duke of York's Theatre, London, in April 2018. 'In the grand tradition of Bulgakov's Black Snow, a penetrating way of investigating the politics of life in general through the troubled internal politics of a particular theatrical institution. Fervently recommended.' Independent'A loving portrayal of the mix of vision, stubbornness, grit, love and luck that can produce great art.' Financial Times

"Please reject absolutely the crazy . . . suggestion that playwrights don't have intentions . . . They do." In this intimate collection of writings by the author of Stuff Happens and Plenty, David Hare reveals a perspective as meticulously constructed as one of his dramas. In selections ranging from his beginnings as a politically charged upstart in the seventies through to his current position as one of the world's most respected playwrights, Hare skillfully expands upon the prevailing themes of his astounding body of work. With a serious eye on social issues--tempered by a distinct irreverence--Hare dissects the role of entertainment in contemporary society, mapping, in the process, a dynamic new trajectory for post-millennium theater.

Connecticut, 1969. On their way back from a party, two couples struggle home through the snow. Not everyone arrives safely. The great detective writer Georges Simenon escaped France at the end of World War Two, and arrived in the USA to start again. With his American wife, he settled at Shadow Rock Farm in Lakeville. Years later, he wrote La Main, a psychological thriller set in a New England farmhouse. David Hare has taken this novel, and forged from it a startling new play. The Red Barn premiered at the National Theatre, London, in October 2016.

After opening to sometimes bewildered reviews at the National Theatre in 1978, David Hare's wildly ambitious play Plenty established itself as a landmark modern classic in its 1982 New York production, which transferred to Broadway with Kate Nelligan playing Susan Traherne.Counterpointing the experiences of a fiercely intelligent Englishwoman flown into France as a secret agent during the Second World War with her life in the following twenty years, David Hare offers a unique view of post-war history, as well as making a powerful statement about changing values and the collapse of ideals embodied in a single life.'The richest, certainly the most resonant experience of my theatrical year.' Clive Barnes, Sunday Times'An explosive theatrical version of a world that was won and lost during and after World War II.' Frank Rich, New York TimesPlenty was made into a film from a screenplay by David Hare with Meryl Streep, Charles Dance and John Gielgud. Plenty returned to The Public, New York, in October 2016 with Susan Traherne played by Rachel Weisz.

When, in 2000, the National Theatre published its poll of the hundred best plays of the 20th century, David Hare had written five of them. Yet he was born in 1947 into an anonymous suburban street in Hastings. It is a world he believes to be as completely vanished as Victorian England.Now in his first panoramic work of memoir, ending as Margaret Thatcher comes to power in 1979, David Hare describes his childhood, his Anglo-Catholic education and his painful apprenticeship to the trade of dramatist. He sets the progress of his own life against the history of a time in which faith in hierarchy, deference, religion, the empire and finally politics all withered away. Only belief in private virtue remains.In his customarily dazzling prose and with great warmth and humour, David Hare explores how so radical a shift could have occurred, and how it is reflected in his own lifelong engagement with two disparate art forms - film and theatre. In The Blue Touch Paper David Hare describes a life of trial and error: both how he became a writer and the high price he and those around him paid for that decision.

David Hare has long been one of Britain's best-known screenwriters and dramatists. He's the author of more than thirty acclaimed plays that have appeared on Broadway, in the West End, and at the National Theatre. He wrote the screenplays for the hugely successful films The Hours, Plenty, and The Reader. Most recently, his play Skylight won the 2015 Tony Award for Best Revival on Broadway.Now, in his debut work of autobiography, "Britain's leading contemporary playwright" (Sunday Times) offers a vibrant and affecting account of becoming a writer amid the enormous flux of postwar England. In his customarily dazzling prose and with great warmth and humor, he takes us from his university days at Cambridge to the swinging 1960s, when he cofounded the influential Portable Theatre in London and took a memorable road trip across America, to his breakthrough successes as a playwright amid the political ferment of the '70s and the moment when Margaret Thatcher came to power at the end of the decade.Through it all, Hare sets the progress of his own life against the dramatic changes in postwar England, in which faith in hierarchy, religion, empire, and the public good all withered away. Filled with indelible glimpses of such figures as Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier, Tennessee Williams, Helen Mirren, and Joseph Papp, The Blue Touch Paper is a powerful evocation of a society in transition and a writer in the making.

Do you want to be happier? Find inner calm? Enjoy a rich and rewarding life? Here's how... The Buddha in Me, the Buddha in You combines the tried-and-tested wisdom of Nichiren Buddhism with the best of popular psychology and personal development, making this a brilliant guide to how life works, and how to get the most from it. Nichiren Buddhism differs from other Buddhist schools in its focus on the here-and-now, and places great importance on individual growth as the starting point for a better world. This, combined with powerful techniques such as NLP, mindfulness, journalling and coaching, makes The Buddha in Me, the Buddha in You the quintessential handbook for happiness.'Buddha' simply means someone who is awakened - yet while Nichiren Buddhists will find fascinating insights into their practice, there is no need to follow a spiritual path to benefit from this book. Through his experience as an internationally acclaimed life coach and practising Buddhist, author David Hare shows us how to wake up to our own potential and that of those around us – to discover everyday enlightenment.

The change will come. And it's not far away, I promise you that. Some figure will emerge from the dark screaming 'Get out of the way'. And not far behind others will follow... The young are waiting. In all their power. Knocking on the door.The master builder Halvard Solness has a fear of falling. A self-made man, without professional qualifications, he has achieved domination in the town but he's increasingly frightened of being displaced by the young. A woman, Hilde Wangel, appears from the mountains, claiming to have known Solness ten years previously, and telling him of a promise he made to her when she thirteen.David Hare has written a new adaptation of one of Henrik Ibsen's most complex autobiographical masterpieces - a mesmeric exploration of control, power, lust and death, which builds to a vertiginous climax.The Master Builder premiered in this English version at The Old Vic, London, in January 2016.

A stage adaptation of Katherine Boo's National Book Award-winning study of life in a Mumbai slumIndia is surging with global ambition. But beyond the luxury hotels surrounding Mumbai airport lies a makeshift slum, Annawadi, full of people with plans of their own. Zehrunisa and her son Abdul aim to recycle enough rubbish to fund a proper house. Sunil, twelve and stunted, wants to eat until he's as tall as Kalu the thief. Asha seeks to steal government antipoverty funds to turn herself into a "first-class person," while her daughter Manju intends to become the slum's first female graduate. But their schemes are fragile; global recession threatens the garbage trade, and another slum dweller is about to make an accusation that will destroy herself and shatter the neighborhood. For Behind the Beautiful Forevers, journalist Katherine Boo spent three years in Annawadi recording the lives of its residents. From her uncompromising book, David Hare has fashioned a tumultuous play on an epic scale.

The press and politicians. A delicate relationship. Too close, and danger ensues. Too far apart, and democracy itself cannot function. Pravda (which means "truth") is a satire written at the height of Thatcherism when huge political changes were afoot. The play essentially studies, through black humour and close scrutiny, the tabloid ethic and the media industry as a get-rich-quick-fix. In the programme for the original 1985 production of Pravda, Brenton wrote: "Pravda means 'the truth'. English newspapers aren't propaganda sheets. The question is, why do so many of them choose to behave as if they are?"The character of Lambert Le Roux is a South African newspaper tycoon and the owner of several companies, striding his way through the regional papers en route to Fleet Street. Turning broadsheets tabloid, dumbing down the message, and stretching the truth, Le Roux takes no prisoners as he manipulates politicians and creates a media monopoly out of a once-respected industry.Le Roux is bent on dominating England's press as he has elsewhere in the world. As we see Le Roux accomplish his aims, we see also how the press is not the organ of truth we like to think it is. The dissemination of the truth is no longer its primary goal under the 'Lambert Le Rouxs' of our world. What is important now is what sells.The play is an epic satire on the media in the Thatcher era; a morality tale about how Andrew, a young liberal journalist, finally succumbs to Le Roux, who makes him editor of a tabloid; and – allegedly – the play is a direct representation of Rupert Murdoch who, even in 1985, was a major force in media ownership. Howard Brenton's and David Hare's first collaboration since Brassneck in 1973, Pravda was premiered at the National Theatre in May 1985, starring Anthony Hopkins and directed by David Hare, and was awarded the London Standard Best Play Award, the City Limits Best Play Award, and the Plays and Players Best Play Award.This Modern Classics edition features an introduction by Philip Roberts, Emeritus Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies at the University of Leeds, and a foreword by Jonathan Church.

The Absence of War offers a meditation on the classic problems of leadership, and is the third part of a critically acclaimed trilogy of plays (Racing Demon, Murmuring Judges) about British institutions.Its unsparing portrait of a Labour Party torn between past principles and future prosperity, and of a deeply sympathetic leader doomed to failure, made the play hugely controversial and prophetic when it was first presented at the National Theatre, London, in 1993.The Absence of War is much more than a piece of skilled reporting. It is actually cast as a classic tragedy.' Guardian

It's not just that rich people don't know what they've got. They don't even know what they throw away. India is beginning to prosper. But beyond the luxury hotels surrounding Mumbai airport is an obstacle, amakeshift slum. It's home to foul mouthed Zehrunisa and her garbage sorting son Abdul, entrepreneurs both. Sunil, twelve, picks plastic. Manju, schoolteacher, hopes to be the settlement's first woman to gain a degree. Asha, go-to woman, exploits every scam to become a first-class person. And Fatima, One Leg, is about to make an accusation that will destroy herself and shatter the neighbourhood. Katherine Boo spent three years under the flight-path, recording the lives of Annawadi's diverse inhabitants. Now from Boo's book, which won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction in 2012, David Hare has fashioned an epic play for the stage which details the ingenious and sometimes violent ways in which the poor and disadvantaged negotiate with corruption to seek a handhold on capitalism's lowest rungs.David Hare's stage adaptation of Behind the Beautiful Forevers premiered at the National Theatre, London, in November 2014.