Never So Good (NHB Modern Plays)

By Howard Brenton

A fascinating portrait of Harold Macmillan in an epic play about the decline of British fortunes in the middle of the twentieth century.

Set against a back-drop of fading Empire, war, the Suez crisis, vintage champagne, adultery and vicious Tory politics at the Ritz, Never So Good paints the portrait of a brilliant, witty but complex man, at times comically and, in the end, tragically out of kilter with his times.

Harold Macmillan, the Eton-educated idealist who rushed, with Homer's Iliad under his arm, to do his duty in the Grenadier Guards, is tormented by the harsh experiences of war and an unhappy marriage. His career in the 1930s is blocked by his loyalty to Winston Churchill, and he nearly loses his life in the Second World War. When at last he becomes Prime Minister he is brought down by the Profumo scandal.

'gripping, compassionate and often delightfully comic... his finest achievement to date' - Telegraph

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Release date: Oct 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781780013619

Howard Brenton

Howard Brenton was born in Portsmouth in 1942. His many plays include Christie in Love (Portable Theatre, 1969); Revenge (Theatre Upstairs, 1969); Magnificence (Royal Court Theatre, 1973); The Churchill Play (Nottingham Playhouse, 1974, and twice revived by the RSC, 1978 and 1988); Bloody Poetry (Foco Novo, 1984, and Royal Court Theatre, 1987); Weapons of Happiness (National Theatre, Evening Standard Award, 1976); Epsom Downs (Joint Stock Theatre, 1977); Sore Throats (RSC, 1978); The Romans in Britain (National Theatre, 1980, revived at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, 2006); Thirteenth Night (RSC, 1981); The Genius (1983), Greenland (1988) and Berlin Bertie (1992), all presented by the Royal Court; Kit’s Play (RADA Jerwood Theatre, 2000); Paul (National Theatre, 2005); In Extremis (Shakespeare’s Globe, 2006 and 2007); Never So Good (National Theatre, 2008); The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists adapted from the novel by Robert Tressell (Liverpool Everyman and Chichester Festival Theatre, 2010); Anne Boleyn (Shakespeare’s Globe, 2010 and 2011); 55 Days (Hampstead Theatre, 2012); #aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei (Hampstead Theatre, 2013); The Guffin (NT Connections, 2013); Drawing the Line (Hampstead Theatre, 2013) and Doctor Scroggy's War (Shakespeare's Globe, 2014) and Lawrence After Arabia (Hampstead Theatre, 2016). Collaborations with other writers include Brassneck (with David Hare, Nottingham Playhouse, 1972); Pravda (with David Hare, National Theatre, Evening Standard Award, 1985) and Moscow Gold (with Tariq Ali, RSC, 1990). Versions of classics include The Life of Galileo (1980) and Danton’s Death (1982) both for the National Theatre, Goethe’s Faust (1995/6) for the RSC, a new version of Danton’s Death for the National Theatre (2010) and Dances of Death (Gate Theatre, 2013). He wrote thirteen episodes of the BBC1 drama series Spooks (2001–05, BAFTA Best Drama Series, 2003).