Topping & Company Booksellers of Bath, Edinburgh, Ely, and St Andrews

DRAMA & THEATRE

The Dream Factory

Daniel Swift

“One of the most exciting and original books about Shakespeare that I’ve read in years." ~ James Shapiro

The remarkable untold story of Shakespeare’s first theatre – the playhouse before the Globe...

In 1576, in a muddy field in Shoreditch, James Burbage erected London’s first purpose-built commercial playhouse. Through the life of this little-known playhouse, Daniel Swift tells the story of how Shakespeare became Shakespeare, and the Elizabethan stage began to flourish. Introducing us to the businessmen who dreamed up the Theatre, the carpenters who built it, the preachers who hated it, and the actors who performed upon its small stage, The Dream Factory recreates the world that produced Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream – and the audiences who first saw them.

The Scandal of the Century

Lisa Hilton

This is The Scandal of the Century, the true story of the author Aphra Behn, who used a shocking love affair to create the first English novel …

London, 1682.

When Lady Henrietta Berkeley elopes with her sister’s husband, her subsequent capture and the lawsuit that follows tears through Restoration England as the scandal of the century.
But it also proves inspiration to one Aphra Behn – already condemned as a scarlet woman of loose morals – who pens a searing and outrageous bestseller based on Henrietta’s shocking affair.

The story of how and why Henrietta acted as she did, and how and why Behn came to write it becomes, in Lisa Hilton’s hands, a stunning portrait of two women attempting to smash the shackles enslaving their sex.

New & Bestselling: Drama & Theatre

The Dream Factory

Daniel Swift

Four Tragedies

William Shakespeare

Second Chances

Stephen Greenblatt and Adam Phillips

Shakespeare is Hard, but so is Life

Fintan O'Toole

She Speaks!

Harriet Walter

The Texts of Shakespeare

Stephen Orgel

Thinking Through Shakespeare

David Womersley

Macbeth

William Shakespeare

More Tales From Shakespeare

Michael Morpurgo

Romeo and Juliet

William Shakespeare

Straight Acting

Will Tosh

Much Ado About Numbers

Rob Eastaway

The Cambridge Footlights

Robert Sellers

Classic Comics: Macbeth

Haynes, Stephen and Stephen Haynes

Laughter is the Best Medicine

Jimmy Tarbuck

Michael Rosen's Pocket Shakespeare: A Beginner's Guide to the Best Bits of the Bard

Michael Rosen

The Playbook

James Shapiro

The Scandal of the Century

Lisa Hilton

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The Mousetrap: 70th Anniversary Edition

Agatha Christie

For more than 70 years, Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap has kept millions of people, from every corner of the globe, on the edge of their seats, and it continues to be a sell-out hit of London theatre.

This brand new edition of the world's longest-running play contains a new introduction by Sophie Hannah, bestselling author of the authorised Agatha Christie Poirot continuation novels, as well as the official play script and a host of exclusive material from the show's archives.

As news spreads of a murder in London, a group of seven strangers find themselves in a remote countryside guesthouse. When a police sergeant arrives, the guests discover - to their horror - that a killer is in their midst.

The Wife of Willesden

Zadie Smith

'Married five times. Mother. Lover. Aunt. Friend.
She plays many roles round here. And never
Scared to tell the whole of her truth, whether
Or not anyone wants to hear it. Wife
Of Willesden: pissed enough to tell her life
Story to whoever has ears and eyes . . .'

Zadie Smith's first time writing for the stage, The Wife of Willesden is a riotous twenty-first century translation of Geoffrey Chaucer's classic The Wife of Bath's Prologue, brought to glorious life on the Kilburn High Road.