Philobiblon

I’m currently reading Andrew Marr’s A History of Modern Britain, a lively account covering political and cultural events from 1945 onwards, and it introduced me to Joan Littlewood, responsible for the Theatre Workshop, which was, Marr says, “by far the most dogged and courageous attempt to make theatre matter”. She was “a Cockney-born outside who fled RADA for a career in provincial poverty… touring through Kendal, Widan, Blackpool and Newcastle, they would be the very first act to exploit the Edinburgh Internal Festival as a “fringe” performance … their first major play … was Uranium 235 an impassioned and funny account of the road to the nuclear bomb, with a strongly anti-nuclear message at a time when … the pro-Bomb Labour government was widely supported.” (p. 94)

Yet, as Marr said, the “Angry Young Men” are much better remembers. Female, left, forgotten…. ever thus.