Power Play: Biography of Peter Hall

The British theatre's greatest impresario since the war, Peter Hall has been the master of three empires - the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre, and now his own. He has directed many of the most talked-about performances in British theatres and opera houses.
What makes him so loved - and so loathed? Author and journalist Stephen Fay has followed his career from his early days, and with the co-operation of his parents, his wives, friends and colleagues, and with access to many unpublished letters and papers, he has uncovered - warts and all - the complex man behind the media image.
Revealing a significantly different picture of Hall's childhood from his own account, Fay traces the rise of the clever, popular schoolchild to the ambitious, passionately committed young man who was to dominate and transform the British theatre in the late twentieth century. There is fresh light on Hall's controversial handling of events when, aged only 41, and already having run the RSC, he won his greatest coup, the Directorship of the Royal National Theatre just before it moved into its new home on the South Bank. It was also to herald Hall's transition from Sixties trendy to Seventies autocrat.
In this portrait Fay examines the successes and the failures, the public face and the private man, as well as describing a momentous era in theatre history.