Writing Left-Handed

The leading British writer-director of his generation, David Hare is also one of the most productive. The last two years have seen the outstanding success of two stage plays, The Secret Rapture and Racing Demon, and the release of two films, Paris by Night and Strapless. The pieces collected here, written left-handed, form both a concealed professional autobiography and a lucid commentary on his work.

David Hare has written over thirty stage plays and thirty screenplays for film and television. The plays include Plenty, Pravda (with Howard Brenton), The Secret Rapture, Racing Demon, Skylight, Amy's View, The Blue Room, Via Dolorosa, Stuff Happens, The Absence of War, The Judas Kiss, The Red Barn, The Moderate Soprano, I'm Not Running and Beat the Devil. For cinema, he has written The Hours, The Reader, Damage, Denial, Wetherby and The White Crow among others, while his television films include Licking Hitler, the Worricker Trilogy, Collateral and Roadkill. In a millennial poll of the greatest plays of the twentieth century, five of the top hundred were his.