Arguments with England: A Memoir

by Michael Blakemore (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2004

  $6.32

  Anyone who has read Michael Blakemore's classic novel Next Season knows he is one of the best writers we have about how life on-stage may feed into life off. His beautiful new memoir, Arguments with England , is perhaps better still - a pitch-perfect account of dreaming youth, driven, frustrated and eventually deepened by a realistic love of the theatre . (David Hare). In the days when Australians called England 'home', Michael Blakemore, an eager young man en route to RADA, made the long sea voyage to 1950s London to find himself in a distinctly foreign country...And so began his struggle to come to terms with the realities of a less than perfect Promised Land. Candid observations about life and art, from his shock on witnessing the poverty in the North to his sense of excitement on reading the works of Proust and Webster, sit beside colourful escapades at drama school and recollections of working with characters such as John Osborne and Tyrone Guthrie. Rescued from the horrors of weekly rep by an exhilarating tour behind the Iron Curtain in Peter Brook's Titus Andronicus with Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, Blakemore recalls life as an actor before his directorial success with A Day in the Death of Joe Egg propelled him to the National Theatre and the start of a glittering career.

• Used

  Paperback
  2005

  $3.47

  'This beautifully written book by the director Michael Blakemore puts most such volumes to shame. It is full of both sharp insights and sudden shafts of wisdom. Often wonderfully funny, it is also touching and painfully honest. By the time you have finished Arguments with England, the author feels like an unusually wise and sympathetic friend.' Sunday Telegraph 'Some of the most exhilarating writing about theatre ever committed to paper, a beady and original analysis of Britain (and incidentally British theatre) in the 50s and 60s, a profound account of the evolution of modern Australia, and a darkly frank one of the inner life of its author. His arguments with England are in the end arguments with himself, but they are utterly engrossing.' Simon Callow, Guardian

• New

  Paperback
  2005

  $15.50

  'This beautifully written book by the director Michael Blakemore puts most such volumes to shame. It is full of both sharp insights and sudden shafts of wisdom. Often wonderfully funny, it is also touching and painfully honest. By the time you have finished Arguments with England, the author feels like an unusually wise and sympathetic friend.' Sunday Telegraph 'Some of the most exhilarating writing about theatre ever committed to paper, a beady and original analysis of Britain (and incidentally British theatre) in the 50s and 60s, a profound account of the evolution of modern Australia, and a darkly frank one of the inner life of its author. His arguments with England are in the end arguments with himself, but they are utterly engrossing.' Simon Callow, Guardian