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James Graham is one of the UK's leading dramatists, a multi-award-winning writer who for almost 20 years has analysed and articulated concepts of power and authority in modern British society. James Graham: State of the Nation Playwright is the first full-length assessment of the writer's output, applying core thematic areas - Democracy, Anarchy, Famous Faces and Television - to understand how different power bases operate in modern society, their effectiveness and influence, and how they came to pre-eminence during the last 70 years. The book concludes with an evaluation of Graham's contribution to state-of-the-nation debates, Britain's cycles of decline and its consequences for understanding contemporary national identity.
List of contents
Chapter 1: Introduction.- Part I: Legitimately Delegated Power.- Chapter 2: Democracy.- Chapter 3: Anarchy.- Part II: Assumed Power.- Chapter 4: Famous Faces.- Chapter 5: Television.- Part III: The State of the Nation.- Chapter 6: Writing for Television.- Chapter 7: The State of the Nation.
About the author
Maryam Philpott is a theatre critic with over 10 years' experience writing for The Reviews Hub and her own site Cultural Capital dedicated to long-form theatre criticism, placing reviews in a broader historical and performance context. With a background in social and cultural history, previous publications include the peer reviewed academic monograph
Air and Sea Power in World War One: Combat and Experience in the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Navy, published by Bloomsbury.
Report
"Graham's work, numbering plays, TV films and series, and even the book for a musical, seems thematically wide at first glance, but this book explores what lies beneath. ... This book ... is a useful cross-disciplinary addition to literature on theatre and the current world by which it is inspired." (James Graham, LOUREVIEWS, loureviews.blog, July 26, 2024)
