LITMIR.BIZ

'[b]Scenes from the Hutton Inquiry[b]Dr David Kelly was the British Government's chief advisor on Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programme. After being named as the source of media claims about the political 'sexing up' of a government dossier on weapons of mass destruction, the scientist committed suicide.Lord Hutton's Inquiry into his death, through the questioning of government ministers and civil servants, reveals as never before the inner workings of the BBC, the Ministry of Defence and Downing Street.

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Turgenev (1818-1883) tends to be seen in Chekhov’s shadow, yet his plays pre-date Chekhov’s work by nearly half a century. A Month in the Country is Turgenev’s acknowledged masterpiece. Includes the plays; A Month in the Country , Stony Broke , One of the Famil y, The Bachelor , Lunch at His Excellency's and A Provincial Lady .

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Boris Godunov recounts the tragic conflict between Tsar Boris and the pretender Dimitri. Following the death of Ivan the Terrible, Boris Godunov became regent for the feeble-minded Tsar Fyodor, the heir to whose throne, the boy-prince Dimitri, died mysteriously in 1591. It was widely rumoured that Boris had murdered him, and when a renegade monk later appeared claiming to be Dimitri, he rapidly became a focus for revolt. The four other plays in this volume belong to Pushkin's Little Tragedies . They are A Feast in Time of Plague , The Miserly Knight , Mozart and Salieri and The Stone Guest .

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Four of Ostrovsky’s finest plays. The best known of these, The Forest (1871), has two young lovers in thrall to their tyrannical elders, who are prevented from marrying until a pair of strolling actors come to their rescue. In Artistes and Admirers (1881), a comedy of theatre life, a dedicated young actress renounces both love and fortune in order to pursue her sacred calling. In the comedy Wolves and Sheep (1875) Ostrovsky returns to a favourite theme, the double-dealing and hypocrisy of the Russian landowning classes, while the melodrama Sin and Sorrow (1863) explores the tragic consequences of a bored provincial wife’s brief affair. Includes the plays The Forest , Artistes and Admirers , Wolves and Sheep and Sin and Sorrow .

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The Heyst family live under a shadow. The father is in prison for embezzlement and the daughter, Eleanora, has been committed to an asylum. Mrs Heyst and her son Elis live from day to day on the edge of collapse. They fear that they are on the brink of ruin, but as the snow melts and a single daffodil appears, Easter Eve brings them hope, joy and mercy. Passionate and powerful, Easter is August Strindberg's most tender play and perhaps closest to his heart. It is a play about forgiveness and the coincidences of life from one of the world's master dramatists. Strindberg was Sweden's greatest playwright, famous for his gripping and unforgettable dramas of human life and love, whose work inspired O'Neill, Williams, Beckett and Pinter.

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The Mammoth is the greatest sailing ship ever built. It is to carry Princess Alysoun from Norway to Scotland, where she is to marry King Andrew the Bold. But she falls in love with Sir Patrick Spens, the bravest captain to sail the seven seas. This is a passionate, funny, subversive celebration of a play.

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The seven plays in this collection share a light-hearted tone, though with occasional and unexpected moments of seriousness. In Marianne , a confirmed cynic intercedes with a married woman on behalf of his best friend. In the eponymous hero of the modern 'fairy tale' Fantasio , by turns imaginative, abrupt and perceptive, Musset provides us with a compelling self portrait. Don't Trifle with Love shows the dangerous strategems of two childhood sweethearts, supposedly destined for marriage. In The Candlestick , an infatuated clerk is set up as a decoy by his employer's young wife and her lover. The one act plays A Diversion , A Door Must be Open or Shut and You Can't Think of Everything deal, in witty, epigrammatic style, with various aspects of romance: a wife and her friend test her husband's fidelity, or lack of it; a man wants to propose to his bantering, blasé hostess; and a couple in love, one absent-minded, the other forgetful, tries to concentrate long enough to get married.

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Feydeau’s major farces are universally admired, but relatively few people are familiar with his early work. When Feydeau left school in 1879 he began writing monologues for leading actors and actresses to perform in salons and at charity concerts But by 1882 he had progressed to the one-act play, which he continued to write through his career. The most successful were the four published in this volume, written between 1908 and 1911, and which he always wished to see published together, as they are here, under the title From Marriage to Divorce . The plays are more or less based upon the breakdown of his own marriage. This volume includes the plays Better Late , One Month Early , Take Your Medicine Like a Man and Don't Walk About With Nothing On . These translations were commissioned by the BBC.

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Horváth's setting for this black political farce is a seedy hotel in Central Europe in the 1920s where the only guest is a drunken, ageing nymphomaniac – wealthy and despotic. Under her sole occupancy the hotel is falling apart and sliding even deeper into decadence. There is no future and no hope until a young woman arrives with a fortune to spend. What follows is a riot of confusion and mistaken identities, satirising the despair and futility of a continent poised on the brink of fascism. Horváth (1901-1938) was accidentally killed in Paris after fleeing from the Nazis. The Belle Vue , one of 16 plays, was not performed until 1969. This translation marked the British premiere, in a production by the Actors Touring Company.

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A 21st Century interpretation of the ancient myth of Orpheus written in the lyrical style of Greek tragedy. Commissioned by the Actors Touring Company, Orpheus opened with shows Ireland and in Greece and was followed by a full UK tour in 1997.

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