Asking Around: Background to the David Hare Trilogy

The British Trilogy

by David Hare

The candid interviews that formed the basis for David Hare's famed trilogy of plays about the state of Britain in the early 1990s.

Asking Around is a record of the firsthand documentary research that provided the inspiration and source material for David Hare's trilogy of plays, Racing Demon, Murmuring Judges, and The Absence of War. The trilogy examined the crises that faced three great British institutions -- the Church, the Law, and the Labour Party -- in the lead-up to the 1992 election that saw the Labour Party once again fail to defeat the Conservatives.

Conducted over five years, Hare's interviews are composed of informal conversations with a wide range of people -- from unhappy vicars and police officers forced to put down strikes staged by their childhood fris, to judges and MPs -- most of whom reveal a surprising awareness of and cynicism about the principles of their organizations. Priests admit to essentially being social workers with no time for questions of faith, wardens tell of inmates who boast of surviving certain prisons, and politicians and journalists reveal what really goes on in policy meetings. These interviews constitute astute social criticism in the words of the people and, taken together, provide an insightful portrait of Britain in the early nineties.

Genres: Nonfiction, Drama

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

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...