Described by its author as 'almost irresponsibly optimistic', Saved is a play set in London in the sixties. Its subject is the cultural poverty and frustration of a generation of young people on the dole and living on council estates. The play was first staged privately in November 1965 at the Royal Court Theatre before members of the English Stage Society in a time when plays were still censored. With its scenes of violence, including the stoning of a baby, Saved became a notorious play and a cause celebre. In a letter to the Observer, Sir Laurence Olivier wrote: 'Saved is not a play for...

From his emergence as a young writer at London's Royal Court Theatre to being hailed as "the greatest living English playwright" (The Independent), this first volume of the notebooks of Edward Bond reveals the mind behind some of the most provoc

Exploring the meeting point between politics and the art of the writer, Bond's notes offer a rare insight into one of the theatre's foremost thinkers whilst charting the creative progress of his work between 1959 and 1980. As well as providing a detailed commentary on his plays, the notebooks also contain early play drafts, poems and stories,...

One of Britain's greatest living contemporary dramatists, Edward Bond is widely studied by schools and colleges. The collection includes a commentary by the author.

The twenty-first century. The past has been abolished and geography - even the sky - is changed. A woman lives in the vast desert of white rubble. A tiny group of people come to her seeking a hiding place but instead are exposed to the deepest uncertainties of their own condition.
Edward Bond is "a great playwright - many, particularly in continental Europe, would say the greatest living English playwright"...

Restoration is set in eighteenth-century England: a world of cruelty, injustice and iron privilege. Lord Are is forced by poverty into an unwanted marriage with the daughter of a wealthy mineowner. One morning, during breakfast, he commits a bizarre and fatal crime. He seeks to pin responsibility for it on his guileless, illiterate footman, Bob Hedges. A battle ensues between Bob's black, justice-hungry wife and the fortified privilege of the ruling classes.
"Bond's great gift as a comic moralist makes Lord Are condemn himself without sacrificing a scintilla of wit. Bond takes the...

Edward Bond Plays:8 brings together recent work by the writer of the classic stage plays Saved, Lear, The Pope's Wedding, and Early Morning. The volume comprises five new plays and two prose essays:

Two Cups introductory essay
Born the third play in the Colline Tetralogy (the first two of which appear in Edward Bond Plays:7); premiering at the Avignon Festival in July 2006.
People the fourth play in the Colline Tetralogy
Chair first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2000.
Existence first...

A wild storm shakes a small East Anglian seaside village and sets off a series of events that changes the lives of all its residents. Set in the high Edwardian world of 1907, The Sea is a fascinating blend of wild farce, high comedy, biting social satire and bleak poetic tragedy.

The play was first produced at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1973 and will be revived at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, from January to April 2008.

'This cosmically inclined neo-Chekhovian romp set in a stiflingly small seaside town in 1907 proves to be every bit as masterful as...

Edward Bond Plays:9 brings together recent work by the writer of the classic stage plays Saved, Lear, The Pope's Wedding, and Early Morning. The volume comprises five new plays and a comprehensive introduction by the author exploring theories of writing and theatre.

Innocence is the final play in The Paris Pentad, a dramatic epic stretching from the 1940s to the end of the twenty-first century. The conflicts at the heart of civilisation have erupted into violence, and the characters in Innocence must seek refuge in each other to...