Originally published to celebrate the Birmingham Rep's half century, this history is also a celebration of its founder, Barry Jackson, a wealthy idealist, passionately in love with the stage and skilled in its arts. It has been called 'the university of the British stage. During its first fifty years many of the best known actors of the time graduated there, including Peggy Ashcroft, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, Margaret Leighton, Cedric Hardwicke, Laurence Olivier, Paul Scofield, Ralph Richardson and Albert Finney. Directors too, Peter Brook and Douglas Seale among them. The Rep, as it was known, was built 'to serve an art instead of making that art serve a commercial purpose.' J C Trewin is the ideal historian, having reviewed productions there for much of the post second world war period.

Author Biography

J.C.Trewin was a British journalist, drama critic and theatrical historian. His parents were Cornish, but he was born in Plymouth in 1908 and brought up in Cornwall. Educated at Plymouth College, his first job was as a cub reporter on the city's Sunday newspaper, the Western Independent, in 1926. After six years he left for London and joined the Morning Post as a reporter and drama critic. On the paper's closure in 1937 he moved to The Observer, doubling as a drama critic and later as literary editor. From the early 1950s he concentrated on the theatre, working for a number of publications including Punch, the Listener, the Birmingham Post, the Illustrated London News and The Lady. He wrote some forty books of theatre history and was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1981. He died in 1990. He is memorialised by the British Critics' Circle in an award that bears his name (and that of his wife, Wendy) for the best Shakespearean performance of the year.