Peter Nichols – författare

Published to coincide with the Golden Globe Race's 50th AnniversaryIt lay like a gauntlet thrown down; to sail around the world alone and non-stop. No one had ever done it, no one knew if it could be done. In 1968, nine men - six Englishmen, two Frenchmen and an Italian - set out to try, a race born of coincidence of their timing. One didn't even know how to sail. They had more in common with Captain Cook or Ferdinand Magellan than with the high-tech, extreme sailors of today, a mere forty years later. It was not the sea or the weather that determined the nature of their voyages but the men they were, and they were as different from one another as Scott from Amundsen. Only one of the nine crossed the finishing line after ten months at sea. The rest encountered despair, sublimity, madness and even death.

A Piece of My Mind "transforms a self-confessed case of writer's block into a continuously inventive and thought-provoking comedy" (Charles Spencer, London Daily News) "The portrait of a marriage and his strained relationship with his teenage children all seem to come straight from the heart. They are all the more affecting for being described in the context of such immaculate artifice" (Charles Spencer, London Daily News)

A rich selection from the best of Nichols' work up to and including his award-winning Privates on Parade A Day in the Death of Joe Egg is based on the author's experience of having a mentally handicapped child and won the John Whiting Award; The National Health was commissioned by Kenneth Tynan for the National theatre and follows the story of a Labour MP who goes into a state hospital suffering from a nervous collapse. It won the Evening Standard Best Play Award; Forget-me-not Lane is a trip down memory lane from the author's own childhood growing up in the West Country; Hearts and Flowers is a TV play about the rivalry between two brothers, one a school teacher living in Bristol the other a successful news journalist and their shared interest in a woman; Freeway is set in a traffic jam and attempts to answer the question of why the automobile has come to be seen to represent liberty incarnate in the modern era.

A rich selection from the best of Nichols' work up to and including his award-winning Privates on Parade This volume continues the stage plays of Peter Nichols, newly revised and introduced by the author. Chez Nous is about English couples who bring their emotional baggage with them on a holiday to France; Privates on Parade is a hit play inspired by the author's experience in Singapore after the war working for the Combined Services Entertainments where he met among others John Schlesinger and Kenneth Williams at a time when 'mixed' entertainment relied on men dressing up as women; Born in the Gardens is inspired by the author's native city Bristol while Passion Play is a play about passion among the elderly - won Best Play (Evening Standard) in 1981. Poppy (the musical that opened the RSC's residence at the Barbican) is set in the Victorian Far East. It takes a pop at imperial hypocrisy and wickedness and won the Best Musical award.

"We are not short of good playwrights in Britain, but I know of none with Nichols' power to put modern Britain on the stage and send the spectators away feeling more like members of the human race" (Irving Wardle, The Times). Among Nichols' most important plays are A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, The National Health and Forget-me-Not Lane. Writers-Files is an important series documenting the work of major dramatists of the last hundred years. Each volume contains a comprehensive checklist of all the writer's plays, with a detailed performance history, excerpted reviews and a selection of the writers' own comments on their work."Methuen are to be congratulated on launching this series...extremely useful to theatre professionals as well as to students and teachers of drama" (David Bradby, Speech and Drama)

"Blue Murder is an absolute cracker, as ingenious as it is riotously funny" (Daily Telegraph) Blue Murder opens with Foreign Bodies, where Swinging London meets bourgeois Shrewsbury and the drinks are laced with cyanide. As the son of the household struggles to write his first play, a murder story is offered to him on a plate. The second half, A Game of Soldiers, is a Whitehall farce taking place in St James's Palace. The same dramatist has brought his complete play to be censored but The Lord Chamberlain's Men have a few shameful secrets of their own to hide, including a priapic guardsman.

'This remarkable play is about a nightmare all women must have dreamed at some time, and most men...'Ronald Bryden, Observer (1967)'Joe Egg is unlike any play I've seen; concerns about whether it's dated fade next to the claims that can now be made for it. It's in the collisions between pious and rogue thoughts that the play's energy lies. We don't know what to feel. Which is why, once seen, Joe Egg won't go away.'Robert Butler, Independent on Sunday (1993)

M3 F4. A classroom. Mid 1950s. Based around a leading character in Peter Nichols' acclaimed work, "Privates on Parade", and inspired by his own experiences, "Lingua Franca" is a fast-paced, sexually-charged story that plays with notions of xenophobia and cultural stereotypes to comic effect. It's the mid-1950s and 'innocent abroad' Steven Flowers has travelled to Florence to teach English in a chaotic language school, Lingua Franca. He is soon adopted by fellow Brit, Peggy, but is more interested in Heidi, a newcomer from Munich. Heidi's deep-seated prejudice against the Jews causes tension with the anti-fascist Italian manager, Gennaro, and Russian Jew Irena. Atheist and pacifist Jestin worships only the art that surrounds him, while Australian Madge struggles when her students start to speak better French than she does. As Steven tries to make sense of his own life and a Europe at peace after so many years of war, Peggy's unrequited obsession leads to highly dramatic consequences. "...richly enjoyable new play ...Nichols is back on top form with a play that offers a Florentine room with multiple points of view." (Michael Billington, "Guardian").

Three generations, two families and the dangerous delights of a Mediterranean island, The Rocks is a bittersweet chronicle of unresolved feuds.Set on the island of Mallorca, The Rocks is a double love story told in reverse. Opening in 2005 with a dramatic event that seems to seal the mystery of two lives, the story moves backwards in time, unravelling over sixty years, amid the olive groves and bars, the boats and poolside parties, the lives and relationships of two intertwined families within an expat community of endearing and flawed characters. As one story is revealed, another, sweeter one, a love story of a couple from the younger generation, arises in the wake of their elder's failures. The Rocks is a darkly comic, bittersweet, finally heartbreaking novel, that slips back in time to reveal the shocking incident that marked and altered these lives for ever.

A provocative comedy about sex, love and infidelity.Comfortably married for 25 years, Eleanor's world is turned upside down when her husband begins an affair with their young friend Kate. As the lies mount up, the marriage is stripped bare, revealing illicit desires and hidden passions. A potent mix of desire, intimacy and deception, this new edition of a modern classic and winner of the Evening Standard Award for Best Play was published alongside its return to the West End in 2013.Peter Nichols's Passion Play was first staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre, London, in January 1981.