'Coveney is the only writer who could get under Smith's skin, capturing her steeliness and vulnerability' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAYFrom West End comedy to Alan Bennett, Harry Potter to Downton Abbey, Academy Award-winning actor Dame Maggie Smith cemented herself as one of Britain's best-loved figures over a career spanning seven decades.But despite her public stature, Smith was an enigmatic figure for much of her life, rarely appearin...

Michael Coveney has been writing theatrical obituaries alongside reviews for several decades and makes a telling, sometimes surprising, selection of the best performers of our time, from Laurence Olivier to Alan Rickman, Peggy Ashcroft to Helen McCrory, Richard Briers to Ken Dodd. Most of these obits appeared in the Guardian, several in the Observer, the Financial Times and the Evening Standard.The fifty articles are arranged in chronological order of each actor's demise and constitute a v...

The first, authorised biography of the anarchic comic genius, much cherished for his performances on stage and screen.Ken Campbell (1941–2008) was a one-man whirlwind who tore through the British theatre establishment using well-rehearsed anarchy and a genius for surreal comedy. Starting out in rep at Stoke-on-Trent, he founded the Ken Campbell Road Show, whose members included the then-unknown Bob Hoskins and Sylvester McCoy, and which toured pubs and clubs with dramatised urban m...

Shortlisted for the Theatre Book Prize 2021This is the vital story of the amateur theatre as it developed from the medieval guilds to the modern theatre of Ayckbourn and Pinter, with a few mishaps and missed cues along the way. Michael Coveney – a former member of Ilford's Renegades - tells this tale with a charm and wit that will have you shouting out for an encore.This is the first account of its kind, packed with anecdote and previously unheard stories, and it shows how ...

No one does glamour, severity, girlish charm or tight-lipped witticism better than Dame Maggie Smith, one of Britain's best-loved actors. This new biography shines the stage-lights on the life and career of a truly remarkable performer, one whose stage and screen career spans six decades.From her days as a West End star of comedy and revue, Dame Maggie's path would cross with those of the greatest actors, playwrights and directors of the era. Whether stealing scenes from Richard Bu...

London is the theatre capital of the world. From world-famous musicals to West End shows, from cutting-edge plays to Shakespeare in its original staging, from outdoor performance to intimate fringe theatre, the range and quality is unsurpassed.Leading theatre critic Michael Coveney invites you on a tour of the forty-five theatres which make the London stage what it is, with stories of the architecture, the people and the productions which have defined each one. Sumptuous photograph...

This fully revised and updated edition of the hugely successful London Theatres features ten additional theatres, including the Victoria Palace Theatre, the Sondheim Theatre, the Bridge Theatre and the Noël Coward Theatre.London is the undisputed theatre capital of the world. From world-famous musicals to West End shows, from cutting-edge plays to Shakespeare in its original staging, from outdoor performance to intimate fr...

This book is the result of a strong collaboration between the Permanent Mission of Ireland to the United Nations and Fordham University’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs. It is a record of a series of distinguished lectures that explored the current challenges to policymakers and humanitarian actors as they focus their efforts on larger and more complex emergencies. The contributors to this book both identify innovative measures in addressing established problems and addres...

This book draws on a variety of substantive examples from science, technology, medicine, literature, and popular culture to highlight how a new technoscientifically mediated and modified phase and form of technosleep is now in the making – in the global north at least; and to discuss the consequences for our relationships to sleep, the values we accord sleep and the very nature and normativities of sleep itself.The authors discuss how technosleep, at its simplest denotes the ‘comin...

Food today is over-corporatized and under-regulated. It is involved in many immoral, harmful, and illegal practices along production, distribution, and consumption systems. These problematic conditions have significant consequences on public health and well-being, nonhuman animals, and the environment, often simultaneously.In this insightful book, Gray and Hinch explore the phenomenon of food crime. Through discussions of food safety, food fraud, food insecurity, agricultural labou...