Peggy: The Life of Margaret Ramsay, Play Agent

With a new foreword by Stewart Pringle, Playwright and Dramaturg of the National Theatre of Great Britain.

Winner of the1997 Theatre Book Prize

Peggy Ramsay was the most admired British play agent of the twentieth century. With a matchless ability to visualise a play just by reading it on the page, she set up in business in 1953, and over the years nurtured and developed the most dazzling client list which included Eugene Ionesco, Joe Orton, Robert Bolt, David Mercer, John McGrath, Iris Murdoch, John Mortimer, James Saunders, Peter Nichols, Charles Wood, Ann Jellicoe, Edward Bond, Christopher Hampton, David Hare, Alan Ayckbourn, Caryl Churchill, Howard Brenton and Willy Russell. Her role in the development of modern British drama was central.

One of the most remarkable things about her was her instinctive generosity. Peggy believed that the living playwright belonged at the centre of the theatre. A theatre without new writing talent to refresh it was worthless.

Author Biography

Colin Chambersis Emeritus Professor of Drama at Kingston University. Colin was Literary Manager of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1981 to 1997, and has also been a journalist and theatre critic. He is co-author with Richard Nelson of Kenneth’s First Play and Tynan (both Royal Shakespeare Company), and he selected and edited for performance Three Farces by John Maddison Morton, which were produced at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond. As well as editing theContinuum Companion to Twentieth Century Theatre, Colin has written extensively on the theatre includingOther Spaces: New Writing and the RSC,Playwrights’ Progress(with Michael Prior),The Story of Unity Theatre, Peggy: The Life of Margaret Ramsay, Play Agent(winner of the inaugural Theatre Book Prize),Inside the Royal Shakespeare Company, Here We Stand: Politics, Performers and PerformancePaul Robeson, Isadora Duncan and Charlie ChaplinandBlack and Asian Theatre in Britain: A History. Peggy to Her Playwrights: The Letters of Margaret Ramsay, play agentwas published to critical acclaim in 2018.