The Author

One of the foremost dramatists of our time, Peter Shaffer was born in Liverpool and educated at St Paul's School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He had several varied jobs before earning fame as a playwright - working as a 'Bevin Boy' in the coal mines during the Second World War, in the acquisitions department of the New York Public Library and for the London music-publishing firm of Boosey & Hawkes.

His first big success came in 1958 with Five Finger Exercise. The play ran for nearly two years at the Comedy Theatre in London, won the Evening Standard Drama Award, and was subsequently presented, with great acclaim, in New York City. Other Shaffer successes include The Private Ear: The Public Eye (which, like Lettice and Lovage, starred Maggie Smith and played at the Globe Theatre; The Royal Hunt of the Sun, an epic drama concerning the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire; the hilarious farce, Black Comedy (put on stage by The Provisional Players in 2000); The Battle of Shrivings; Equus (put on stage by U34, a former Tübingen student theatre group in 1999) , a sensational triumph in London and in New York where it received the 1975 Tony Award for Best Play of the year; and Amadeus, which also won the same prize, as well as the 1979 Evening Standard Drama Award, the Plays and Players Award, and the London Theatre Critics' Award. Both these last mentioned plays boast the rare distinction of having run for over a thousand performances on Broadway, and in 1984 the film of Amadeus won the Academy Award for both script and picture. His most recent plays are Yonadab, Lettice and Lovage, which received the Evening Standard Drama Award for the best comedy of 1988, and The Gift of the Gorgon.