Slowly I learnt the ways of humans: how to ruin, how to hate, how to debase, how to humiliate. And at the feet of my master I learnt the highest of human skills, the skill no other creature owns: I finally learnt how to lie.Childlike in his innocence but grotesque in form, Frankenstein's bewildered creature is cast out into a hostile universe by his horror-struck maker. Meeting with cruelty wherever he goes, the friendless Creature, increasingly desperate and vengeful, det...

This first collection of Nick Dear's work for the stage displays the breadth and achievement of one of the most talented and inventive dramatists writing in Britain today. The volume contains two of his re-workings of eighteenth-century history, The Art of Success and In the Ruins, his intelligent and original political parable Zenobia and his chilling adaptation of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw.

The Hogarth Plays catch one of England's most celebrated artists at two crucial points in his career: once at the beginning, and once at the end.In The Art of Success the events of ten tumultuous years are compressed into a single night, as newlywed William Hogarth makes his way through eighteenth-century London's high society and its debauched underworld. The play was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, in 198...

Patron? Collaborator? Employer? Voyeur? Lover?Questioned about the nature of his relationship with the 3rd Earl of Southampton, William Shakespeare is on trial.The evidence: tender poems, financial dependency, attempted revolution.A compelling new drama set in Elizabethan England - a powder keg of sex, politics and power - Dedication by Nick Dear premiered at the Nuffield Theatre, Southampton, in September 2016.

The Syrian desert. Third century AD. Zenobia, warrior Queen of Palmyra, moves her forces into battle with Aurelian, Emperor of Rome. Meanwhile, her son is engaged in bizarre chemical experiments with Porphyry, a philosophy student with his own secret.A story of love and adventure at the time of the decline of Imperial Rome as Zenobia makes a stand for independence against the Empire.Zenobia was produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company and premiered at the Young Vi...

Some say power's an illusion. But Louis is the master of illusion. He has turned government into a spectacle, politics into a circus.Nick Dear's new play on the origins of the Sun King is a dark and dazzling tale of ambition, corruption and illusion. The play premiered at the Royal National Theatre in London, in June 2003.

Deep in the Hampshire countryside Edward Thomas, disaffected husband, exhausted father and tormented writer, scrapes a living. In 1913 he meets American poet Robert Frost and everything changes. As their friendship blossoms Edward writes, emerging from his cocoon of self-doubt into one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century. But he makes the drastic decision to enlist, confounding his friends and family.The Dark Earth and the Light Sky, which premiered at t...

Ruthless Romans reveals the grim goings-on of the greatest empire ever, from the terrible twins who founded Rome to the evil emperors who made murder into a sport. Read on for gory details about the cruel Colosseum and the people and animals who were massacred there... and find out how, if you upset them enough, the ruthless Romans would CRUCIFY you. Eeek!

When your teachers drone on about the Romans, I bet they don't tell you how REALLY ROTTEN they were. Find out in a bloodthirsty book with the nasty bits left in!

'Rats are always bigger than you expect...'Marcus Didius Falco, ancient Rome's hangdog investigator, hates sharing a cell with a rodent - though being bailed by his old mother is almost as embarassing. His highborn girlfriend can't decide if she wants him and Titus Caesar's reward for past services is a wet fish. Hoping for a better life, or at least a better apartment, he takes on new clients.On the elegant slopes of the Pincian Hill, three nouveaux riches freedmen with tw...

THE GRIPPING ADVENTURE BASED ON AN EPIC TRUE STORY FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR, PERFECT FOR FANS OF BERNARD CORNWELL'HIS FINEST NOVEL TO DATE . . . THE BATTLE SCENES ARE THRILLING' SUNDAY EXPRESS__________In the Ancient World, one army was feared above all others.401 BC. The Persian king Artaxerxes rules an empire stretching from the Aegean to northern India.

The epic tale of wrongful imprisonment, adventure and revenge, in its definitive translationThrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantès is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to use the treasure to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. Dumas' epic tale of suffering and retribu...