Front Row Evenings at the Theatre

The incredible range of Beryl Bainbridge's talents is known toi her most fervenbt admirers. As well as being one of Britian's most acclaimed and biggest selling novelists, she is also an artist,a former actor and in recent years an accomplished theatre critic. Beryl Bainbridge is a Liverpudlian by birth. After being expelled from Merchant Taylor's School at the age of fourteen, she determined to be an actress. After drama school,she entered the Liverpool Repertory Company and subsequently that of Dundee. She was an actress in a series of early episodes of Coronation Street. One of her most succesful novels, An Awfully Big Adventure, was set in the theatrical world of J.M.Barrie and was made into a motion picture starring Alan Rickman. Indeed a number of her books have been adapted for stage and telvision. She wrote for years a column for the Standard, often touching on theatrical matters, and most recently writes monthly for The Oldie Magazine as their theatre critic. This is the background to Behind the Curtain, Beryl Bainbridge's collection of the best of her writing about the theatre . The book contains fascinating insight into the work of people like Alan Bennet, Alan Rickman, Ronald Harwood. There are delightful little sketches of the actors and actresses Bainbridge worked with in the earlky years-including Judith Chalmers. Here is a book to enchant Beryl Bainbridge's countless fans and thorough the lengthy autobiographical introduction to give new insight into the imagination of a creative genius.