Stage

Tucked in among my books, I found a publisher's copy of Twelve Hundred Hostages. There was some blurb… In execution, the play might just about stand up as a time-warped addition to the Tales From the Arabian Nights. It echoes…

There was more correspondence with agents in New York, the UK and France about rights and percentages. Until, finally, Nicholas got his version of our translation-from-the-French and began a meticulously detailed revising of his own script – the French version…

Perhaps inevitably, we entered a period you might call the battle for recognition and rights. In all my time in theatre I've only ever been ratted on, or swindled, over rights to a text. Viable plays seem to provoke the…

There is an entry, in the category of counts – of whom there are many – in a schedule of the Hungarian aristocracy as follows: “Wenckheim: Article 73 of 1790/91. Austrian baron: 1776; Austrian count: 1802. The Wenckheims’ hereditary seat…

Nicholas Wenckheim was tall, slim handsomely lean-faced, beautifully dressed – probably in his fifties. He spoke remarkably good English and displayed the most exquisite manners. Even when – later – I detected anger, even fury, he controlled it in a…

So we wrote to Nicholas Wenckheim as follows: Would he go with this approach? The answer seemed to be ‘yes’. Other jurisdictions do bad things, too, he seems to concede. Also, some astonishing figures came out of this correspondence. Not…