Shakespeare on Toast

While working and speaking at the Hay Festival last week I interviewed Sir Richard Eyre, who ran the Royal National Theatre for ten years, published excerpts of his diaries of his time there in his National Service, and was at the Festival to interview his wife, the producer Sue Birtwistle, on the challenges of adaptation. I grabbed half an hour with him…

There was a look in his eyes that made me speechless. Not a good way to start an interview, I grant you, but goosebumps shivered up my arms, I put down my pen and forgot about the dictaphone in my bag.

He stared into the middle distance, watching the scene play out in his memory. “Heart-breaking…”

Click here to read the rest of the interview…

Four months to publication, the wonderful and very kind Judi Dench has this to say about Shakespeare on Toast:

This is a brilliantly enjoyable look at Shakespeare which dispels the myths and makes him accessible to all. I love it!

Hi, and welcome to the Shakespeare on Toast website.

I’ve set this site up as a base for my new book Shakespeare on Toast – Getting a Taste for the Bard, published by Icon Books in September 2008.

In times to come, there’ll be details of literary festival talks, reviews, and anything else interesting I can think of.

There’s also a Facebook group that’s been set up, for those of you that do, and a space there for a discussion forum.

If you’d like to hear more about the book, and exactly why it’s different from all the other books on Shakespeare, click here for the video I recorded for Meet the Author, or you can click on the Amazon link over to the right under Toast Links, to pre-order the book.

Thanks for visiting…

Ben