Book of the Week - A Strange Eventful History - Episode 4

Eleanor Bron reads from Michael Holroyd's biography of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving, two greats of the Victorian stage. Despite Ellen's fears that the role of Lady Macbeth was beyond her capabilities, her performance was perhaps her greatest ever role. But after Macbeth, her relationship with Irving became more and more distant and her roles less and less demanding. The Lyceum suffered failure after failure, with Irving seemingly out of touch with contemporary trends as he ignored the work of modern playwrights such as Ibsen, Shaw and Wilde. The fortunes of the great theatre began to look very precarious.