The Blue Touch Paper: A Memoir

by David Hare

Born in 1947, David Hare is one of Britainâ€s foremost playwrights and screenwriters. With warmth, humour, and characteristically dazzling prose, this memoir vividly evokes his Anglo-Catholic upbringing in a suburban Hastings ‘as vanished as Victorian Englandâ€, against the backdrop of a time in which faith in empire, Christianity, hierarchy and deference were being swept away. It also charts his early struggles to become a writer – and the high price he and those around him paid for that decision.

Genres: Theatre, Nonfiction, Biography, Book Club

368 pages, Hardcover

First published August 25, 2015

About the author

Sir David Hare (born 5 June 1947) is an English playwright, screenwriter and theatre and film director. Most notable for his stage work, Hare has also enjoyed great success with films, receiving two Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay for writing The Hours in 2002, based on the novel written by Michael Cunningham, and The Reader in 2008, based on the novel of the same name written by Bernhard Schlink.

On West End, he had his greatest success with the plays Plenty, which he adapted into a film starring Meryl Streep in 1985, Racing Demon (1990), Skylight (1997), and Amy's View (1998). The four plays ran on Broadway in 1982–83, 1996, 1998 and 1999 respectively, earning Hare three Tony Award nominations for Best Play for the first three and two Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play. Other notable projects on stage include A Map of the World, Pravda, Murmuring Judges, The Absence of War and The Vertical Hour. He wrote screenplays for the film Wetherby and the BBC drama Page Eight (2011).

As of 2013, Hare has received two Academy Award nominations, three Golden Globe Award nominations, three Tony Award nominations and has won a BAFTA Award, a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and two Laurence Olivier Awards. He has also been awarded several critics' awards such as the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and received the Golden Bear in 1985. He was knighted in 1998.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ha...

Reviews

[Pauline Butcher Bird · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first part of this book that relates to David Hare's childhood is the best part because I could feel his claustrophobic upbringing in 1950s England. His parents had married hurriedly during the War and wished merely to live a quiet life and conform to their lower middle-class status. Meanwhile, his father, who worked as a steward on Cunard's liners, was absent for 40-odd weeks a year and this left David with a sense of separateness that he never seemed to overcome. He skims over his school years and sexual awakening - an odd omission given the later detail about his extra-marital affair. The rest of the book I found tedious - endless squabbles in England's theatre world and a roll-call of famous names that are given one sentence each. I skipped to get to the human story, his long-suffering wife and their three children (hardly mentioned) through to the death of his mother. Though he appears not to have noticed, David's perpetual absenteeism had turned him into his father and, as a result, does not do himself well.
Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa

[Harry McDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fact of the matter is, David Hare could write just about anything and I'd want to read it. In his first memoir he elaborates on previous meditations on his origins, with the arc of the fist half of the book focusing on his path to becoming, or rather describing himself as a playwright.

The second half felt quite different, taking us through the early work of the author but also telling the story of his relationship with Kate Nelligan, which was totally fascinating to me as a brilliant study of the blurring of the lines between private and public, personal and political that seems to be the spine of all his work.

Oh, and of course its beautifully written.

[Lorraine York · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I were rating this book up to about the half-way to three-quarters point, I think I'd have given it 5 stars. The critique of postwar bourgeois British verities is wonderfully acerbic. And the portrait of a childhood overshadowed by a persistent self-dislike is moving and engrossing. Those familiar with devastating accounts of postwar British boys' schooling will recognize this as a distinguished addition to that genre. But unlike the NY Times reviewer, who is put off by Hare's account of his earlier years, seeing it as evidence of snobbery, and who prefers the latter half of the memoir in which Hare recounts his years in the theatre and the breakdown of his marriage, it is that latter half that puts me off. The sections dealing with the politics, inevitable back-stabbing, and power plays of the theatrical world will be fascinating to some, but to me it seemed like a longeur--a trip through theatrical backbiting and account-settling that leaves me rather cold. And in his account of his on-again off-again extramarital affair with the Canadian actor Kate Nelligan, we see a man who, while he is justly praised for writing superb parts for strong women, doesn't seem to think through the implications of feminist thinking on the personal level. He baldly admits having lied to his wife for two years about the resumption of his affair. For me, the breaking point comes when Hare, visiting Nelligan after they had broken up, sees her break into tears, realizes that the breakup had affected her more than he had realized, but then reflects "It was when Kate was crying across the tea-table from me that I first thought it would be interesting to cast her in Licking Hitler." Say what? No retrospective self-consciousness of the shittiness of this thought; had there been, I would have read this as a brave moment of self-awareness and self-indictment indeed. But no. This from a man who can write, many pages earlier, "From the start, that feminism would inform my writing. How will we remember the twentieth century? As a time when the role of women in the developed world, at home and at work, changed decisively. Not to reflect that would have been unthinkable." But not to reflect on how one's own personal inhabiting of male power in one's own life? That's unthinkable too.

[Jane Mulligan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspired to read this after seeing him interviewed live recently in such an interesting conversation. I learned a lot about theatre from reading this book, which gave me a new appreciation for it. To sum up, it can take you a while to get where you’re destined to be. Getting there is the main thing.

[Kate Buford · Rating 3 out of 5]

David Hare has been such a provocative and compelling playwright that I eagerly bought this memoir. However, it often reads like inside baseball for the English theater. Lots of names and antecedents that are, no doubt, very familiar to a British reader - and many to me -- but the book was clearly not edited at all for U.S. consumption. But, in the end it didn't really matter. I enjoyed immersing myself in Hare's evolution as an artist in 1960s and '70's Britain. There was an English haphazard coziness to the narrative.

[Cheryl Walsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Memoir of David Hare's life, up to the late 1970s and the success of Plenty. A "postscript" summarizes his life after that until the death of his mother in 2001. I enjoyed how he describes the development of his philosophies of art as he tells the story of how he became a playwright. He's pretty self-critical, but his arrogance still shines through, in mostly entertaining ways. The book would have been enormously gratifying if I knew more about British theatre in the 1960s and '70s, but many of his observations were lost on me because I didn't recognize the people involved, or the shows mentioned, or the relationships that were common knowledge to those involved in the theatre scene. Nevertheless, it was well worth reading for the glimpses into the mind of a creative genius.

[Catriona · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully-written, as you'd expect, and jam-packed with social history, covering the time from David Hare's birth in 1947 to the election of Margaret Thatcher, I did not expect to enjoy this book anywhere near as much as I actually did. The sections on his development as a director and a writer and the febrile (and at times back-stabbing) atmosphere of 1970s theatre in Britain are fascinating. While his account of his own behaviour during his marriage to the magnificent and hugely accomplished Margaret Matheson is at best self-serving, this book is a rich, interesting and complex treat.
Recommended.

[Jeff Howells · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of Britain's best, and most prolific, post war playwrights. David Hare's memoirs cover his early life right up to the end of the 70s at the time where he had his first big theatrical hit (Plenty) and his marriage ended (bizarrely in the house of Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee). This is a great look back at 60s & 70s Britain. It's just unfortunate that at a talk I saw him give when this book was published in hardback he maintained that he would never write a follow up. So it looks like we are to be denied a book detailing his most successful works.

[Irina Karpova · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did rather dislike the author’s persona throughout the book: his stiff upper lip, his reservedness (he briefly mentioned his asthma and eczema somewhere on page 300), his coldness. But I couldn’t help it but loved how political he was and is.

And another thing: he’s a wit. Describe yourself in a few sentences, the interviewer asks Mr. Hare. Tall, thin, 65, that was his answer.

Resume: overwhelmingly English and very enjoyable.

[T P Kennedy · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a worthy read for those with an interest in post war theatre in Great Britain and the career of Hare. I found it something of a trudge. The initial biographical portion was interesting though quite coldly told but I lost interest in the wanderings through various theatre companies and the internal politics of them. It's overly long and could have done with some editing.

[Dan White · Rating 5 out of 5]

First rate memoir -- every page has a turn of phrase, anecdote, or gimlet-eyed observation. A valuable read for anyone interested in pursuing a creative life and all that entails, from the highs to the brickbats.

[Jeff Talbott · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars.