The Audience

(Paperback, Main)

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For sixty years Elizabeth II has met each of her twelve prime ministers in a weekly audience at Buckingham Palace, a meeting like no other in British public life. It is private. Both parties have an unspoken agreement never to repeat what is said.

The Audience breaks this contract of silence. It imagines a series of pivotal meetings between the Downing Street incumbents and their queen. From Churchill to Cameron, each prime minister has used these private conversations as a sounding board and a confessional - sometimes intimate, sometimes explosive. From young mother to grandmother, these private audiences chart the arc of the second Elizabethan Age. Politicians come and go through the revolving door of electoral politics, while she remains constant, waiting to welcome her next prime minister.

The Audience by Peter Morgan premiered at the Gielgud Theatre, London, in March 2013. It returned to the Apollo Theatre, London, in this revised version in April 2015.

'This is something rarer: funny and truthful, goodhearted, spiky, full of surprises. I loved every minute. there are stunning political moments. It's all fiction, of course, and often painfully funny, yet is expresses large and serious truths.' The Times

Author Bio

Peter Morgan is an international award-winning writer for stage, screen and film. As well as receiving Oscar and BAFTA nominations for his screenplay for Stephen Frears' The Queen starring Helen Mirren, Morgan won a host of international awards including Golden Globe, British Independent Film and Evening Standard British Film Awards. His latest play The Audience opens at the Gielgud Theatre, London, in February 2013. His last, the award-winning Frost/Nixon, received critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic before being adapted in to an Academy Award-nominated film of the same name. The film garnered five Oscar nominations, including Best Screenplay. His many other film credits include the award-winning The Last King of Scotland, The Damned United, the upcoming Rush directed by Ron Howard as well as his current project about the life of Hugh Hefner for Warner Bros entitled Playboy. His extensive television credits include the critically acclaimed The Deal - the first part of Morgan's Tony Blair Trilogy (BAFTA Award for Best Drama), The Special Relationship and Longford.