{"title":"John Heilpern","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the insightful world of John Heilpern, celebrated biographer and cultural commentator. From captivating celebrity profiles to explorations of theatre and film, discover compelling narratives and sharp observations.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"john-osborne-book-john-heilpern-9780099275862","title":"John Osborne","description":"John Osborne (1929-1994), unapologetic rebel and original Angry Young Man, changed  the face of modern British theatre forever with Look Back in Anger. An actor turned playwright, Osborne was married five times, his private life generating a tumult and drama to match that of his work.  This startlightly candid, authorised but intimate and informal biography is the first to have access to Osborne's own notebooks and private letters, which record for posterity his often anguished nature. It includes personal interviews with scores of his friends and enemies, among them a bombshell of a confession from Osborne's alleged male lover, and the first public comments from his estranged daughter Nolan, who was thrown out of the family home at just sixteen.   This is an essential, unorthodox, moving and extraordinarily frank portrait of the man, the playwright and his era.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49507910582545,"sku":"GOR001413106","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49652540342545,"sku":"GOR004282211","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53364629340433,"sku":"GOR006251269","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0099275864.jpg?v=1750940369"},{"product_id":"how-good-is-david-mamet-anyway-book-john-heilpern-9780415925471","title":"How Good is David Mamet, Anyway?","description":"First Published in 2000. Why do we go to the theater? There's a question! Or put it this way: Why, oh why, do we go to the theater? If we go to a movie and it isn't any good, well it's not the end of the world. We're usually quite content just the same. It passes the time. Though, as Samuel Beckett pointed out, the time would have passed anyway. But if we're disappointed at the theater, everything changes dramatically. We cannot while away the time at the theater. Time becomes precious.  This is a collection of writings about the world of the theatre and includes pieces about Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ralph Richardson, Arthur Miller, Michael Bennett, Noel Coward, Barbra Streisand, Ralph Fiennes and more.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49531019886865,"sku":"GOR001793509","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49939285803281,"sku":"CIN0415925479G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52136906588433,"sku":"NLS9780415925471","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53077336752401,"sku":"GOR010517168","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53268800471313,"sku":"CIN0415925479VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0415925479.jpg?v=1751134336"},{"product_id":"john-osborne-book-john-heilpern-9780701167806","title":"John Osborne","description":"John Osborne (1929-1994), unapologetic rebel and original Angry Young Man, defined England in many controversial ways. As iconoclastic as Shaw or Wilde, he 'blow-torched his way into our lives', changing the face of modern British theatre in 1956, with \"Look Back in Anger\". An actor turned playwright, there was about him the public showmanship of his own tragic invention, Archie Rice in \"The Entertainer\". But, Osborne hid his anguished nature and immobilizing depressions from the outside world in his secret notebooks. This startlingly candid, authorized but intimate and informal biography is the first to have access to these sensational notebooks and private letters. Osborne was born in rented rooms in Fulham, in 1929, to a tubercular father and a barmaid mother. An ailing child, he learned to box and was expelled from school for hitting his headmaster. At fifteen, he began as a lowly journalist for Gas World and fled to join a repertory theatre company, where he learned not only the craft that would change his life and revolutionize British theatre, but also how to reinvent himself...Five times married, to actresses Pamela Lane, Mary Ure and Jill Bennett, and critics Penelope Gilliatt and Helen Dawson (he was supposed to have hated critics), his private life generated its own tumult and drama, farce and pathos. This impeccably researched biography includes personal interviews with scores of friends and enemies, among them a bombshell of a confession from Osborne's alleged male lover, and the first public comments from Osborne's estranged daughter, treated by her father with Lear-like madness. Heilpern, a theatre critic himself, defines Osborne's unique, contradictory genius, and shows beneath it the hopelessly romantic English melancholic, a defiant individualist neither of the right nor the left, an ogre with charm, a Roundhead and a Cavalier, a radical who hated change, an embattled patriot for certain threatened English values - its language, music, customs and even its prayers. John Osborne died on Christmas Eve, 1994. This is an essential, unorthodox, moving and extraordinarily frank portrait of the man, the playwright and his era.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49535136858385,"sku":"GOR003990098","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50705955094801,"sku":"GOR011181964","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51579418935569,"sku":"GOR003229048","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0701167807.jpg?v=1750880868"},{"product_id":"conference-of-the-birds-book-john-heilpern-9780413614001","title":"Conference of the Birds","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49571914875153,"sku":"GOR002426138","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49638696485137,"sku":"GOR004373659","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52437074837777,"sku":"GOR001369795","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/041361400X.jpg?v=1751006835"},{"product_id":"conference-of-the-birds-book-john-heilpern-9780140048254","title":"Conference of the Birds","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49608760394001,"sku":"GOR001579697","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49611580277009,"sku":"GOR002615335","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49645037519121,"sku":"GOR001025964","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0140048251.jpg?v=1751163991"},{"product_id":"conference-of-the-birds-book-john-heilpern-9780878301102","title":"Conference of the Birds","description":"Conference of the Birds is John Heilpern's true story of an extraordinary journey. In December 1972, the director Peter Brook and an international troupe of actors (Helen Mirren and Yoshi Oida among them) left their Paris base to emerge again in the Sahara desert. It was the start of an 8,500-mile expedition through Africa without precedent in the history of theater. Brook was in search of a new beginning that has since been revealed in all his work--from Conference of the Birds and Carmen to TheMahabharata and beyond. At the heart of John Heilpern's brilliant account of the African experiment is a story that became a search for the miraculous.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49877956231441,"sku":"GOR001881779","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50372631462161,"sku":"CIN0878301100G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51009245282577,"sku":"NIN9780878301102","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52123232239889,"sku":"NLS9780878301102","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52950356656401,"sku":"CIN0878301100VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0878301100.jpg?v=1751431967"},{"product_id":"john-osborne-book-john-heilpern-9780375403156","title":"John Osborne","description":"John Osborne, the original Angry Young Man, shocked and transformed British theater in the 1950s with his play \u003ci\u003eLook Back in Anger\u003c\/i\u003e. 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