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We are delighted to welcome one of our greatest living playwrights to the festival. Sir David Hare’s work is performed around the globe, making him one of Britain’s most internationally performed playwrights. Sir David is the author of 28 plays for the stage, 16 of which have been performed at the National Theatre. These include Plenty, The Secret Rapture, Skylight, Amy’s View, Via Dolorosa, Stuff Happens, Gethsemane and The Power of Yes.

His many screenplays for cinema and television include Licking Hitler, Damage, The Hours and The Reader. He directed his most recent television film Page Eight for the BBC.

Sir David, whose awards include a Bafta, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Olivier Award and the London Theatre Critics’ Award, will be discussing his latest play South Downs. It is set in 1962 at a public school similar to the one attended by Sir David. It features an adolescent’s musings on education, faith and teenage friendship. He will also talk more generally about his life as a playwright.

Sir David will be talking to Robert Hewison, who has written on the theatre and the arts for The Sunday Times since 1981. He is the author of some 20 books in the field of 19th and 20th-century cultural history, an expert on John Ruskin, and was Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford in 2000. He is currently working on a study of the arts in the Blair/Brown years.