Why am I passionate about this?
I began my professional life as an actress and have skittered around the edges of theatre ever since, in various capacities. While I haven’t been on a stage for nearly forty years and I wouldn’t venture onto one at the point of a gun, I have always found the life of the actor fascinating. I’m old enough to have witnessed huge changes in the theatre over the decades, and it is intriguing to discover how much has changed—absconding managers are pretty well a thing of the past these days, and today’s actors don’t drink as much—yet how much the adaptability and single-minded passion of actors remain the same.
Patsy's book list on early 20th century English theatre and actors
Why did Patsy love this book?
This great book gives a comprehensive and amusing overview of English society in the Edwardian period and the battle between what the author calls the Established Order and New Ideas, as reflected in the theatre and women’s role in society in particular. There is a very funny description of the role of the Censor, an employee of the Lord Chamberlain called the Examiner of Plays, an ex-bank manager who made his own rules according to his own whim and was accountable to nobody. The book also covers topics such as the popularity of ‘theosophy’ and the occult; and the prevailing hypocrisy of the Old Order as epitomised in the attitude of the monarch, King Edward VII, who tolerated ‘irregular’ behaviour so long as it was discreet, and condemned public immorality while indulging in affairs left right and centre.
1 author picked The Edwardian Turn of Mind as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
The Edwardian Turn of Mind brilliantly evokes the cultural temper of an age. The years between the death of Queen Victoria and the outbreak of the First World War witnessed a turbulent and dramatic struggle between the old and the new. Samuel Hynes considers the principal areas of conflict - politics, science, the arts and the relations between men and women - and fills them with a wide-ranging cast of characters: Tories, Liberals and Socialists, artists and reformers, psychoanalysts and psychic researchers, sexologists, suffragettes and censors. His book is a portrait of a tumultuous time - out of which contemporary…