The Blue Touch Paper: A Memoir - Brossura

But this is, throughout, an invigorating memoir, an elegantly unvarnished tale. It is fascinating to learn that Hare discovered a talent for dialogue before he had written a play. The account of the legendary Portable Theatre Company is absorbing too, filling one with nostalgia for an age when travelling light was easy. And his account of his vain attempts to sell vacuum cleaners in the US as a young man is priceless. (Kate Kellaway The Observer)

It's an intoxicating read for those, like me, who missed out on the careless abandon and furious optimism of that era, when artists thought they could make art, change the world and have fun (and sex) all at the same time....By the end of the book Margaret Thatcher is in power and the white-faced mimes have turned on David for his determination to write plays that people want to see. But the enthusiasm with which he later leapt at Stuff Happens never deserts him, and infects every page of this terrific book. (Nicholas Hytner Evening Standard)

an engrossing, authentic and vivid portrait of those long-lost times. **** (James Walton The Telegraph)

Yet Hare's complications help to make this a marvellous read, full of wisdom about theatre, and with a candour about his own bad behaviour that brings tears to the eyes as he risks becoming just another absentee dad as the narrative ends with his divorce and a new government in 1979. Hare knows he's trouble, for good and for ill. The Blue Touch Paper reminds us that he's worth it. (Dominic Maxwell The Times)

it is an interesting social history....But it will be of particular fascination to anyone who loves actors, writers and directors. The cameo appearances from Bill Nighy, Tom Stoppard and Helen Mirren, the gossipy details of pioneering touring company Portable and of life at the newly-opened National Theatre with Peter Hall, not to mention friendships with Tennessee Williams and Philip Roth (revealed as a one-time regular at the Notting Hill Spudulike), are a delight. (Louise Jury The Independent)

I've enjoyed the book so much, in fact, that I've already re-read great swathes of it forwards and backwards. It's sure to become a classic tale of a life in the theatre of our time. (Michael Coveney What's On Stage)

For those interested in postwar Britain or modern British theatre,.. the text is filled with plenty. (Mark Lawson The New Statesman)

Honest, thoughtful and thought-provoking . . . As part of his reflections on his life so far, Hare takes aim at critics and modern parenting - "a dippy celebration of child­ren as little unfallen gods" - and the smothering suffocation of institutions and places (Bexhill-on-Sea, for example, where he grew up), and he is unflinching in shin­ing the spot­light on himself. Everything about the writer Hare is, the vulnerabilities of the artist when putting work into the public eye, the changing nature of theatre, is here. (Kate Mosse Guardian)

The shockingly funny and brilliant memoir from one of Britain's greatest and best-loved writers.