Ronald Hayman is a British critic, dramatist, and writer best known for his biographies.

Early life

Ronald Hayman was born on May 4, 1932 in Bournemouth

Bournemouth

Bournemouth is a large coastal resort town in the ceremonial county of Dorset, England. According to the 2001 Census the town has a population of 163,444, making it the largest settlement in Dorset. It is also the largest settlement between Southampton and Plymouth...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 to John and Sadie Hayman. He was educated at St Paul's School in London and at Trinity Hall

Trinity Hall, Cambridge

Trinity Hall is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It is the fifth-oldest college of the university, having been founded in 1350 by William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich.- Foundation :...

, Cambridge University

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

, where he earned a B.A. in 1954 and an M.A. in 1963. He served in the Royal Air Force

Royal Air Force

The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...

 for a one year duty, from 1950-1951.

After reading English at Cambridge in 1954, Hayman went to Germany for two years, mainly to write. He became involved in professional theatre after playing the lead in Love's Labour's Lost

Love's Labour's Lost

Love's Labour's Lost is one of William Shakespeare's early comedies, believed to have been written in the mid-1590s, and first published in 1598.-Title:...

 with English amateurs in Berlin. He then attended drama school and acted for three years in rep and on television.

Writing career

His first play, The End of an Uncle, was staged at Wimbledon

Wimbledon, London

Wimbledon is a district in the south west area of London, England, located south of Wandsworth, and east of Kingston upon Thames. It is situated within Greater London. It is home to the Wimbledon Tennis Championships and New Wimbledon Theatre, and contains Wimbledon Common, one of the largest areas...

 in 1959. He made his debut as a director with Jean Genet

Jean Genet

Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...

's Deathwatch

Deathwatch (play)

Deathwatch is a play written by Jean Genet in 1947, performed for the first time in Paris at the Théâtre des Mathurins in February 1949 under the direction of Jean Marchat.-Plot:...

 at the Arts Theatre

Arts Theatre

The Arts Theatre is a theatre in Great Newport Street, in Westminster, Central London. It now operates as the West End's smallest commercial receiving house.-History:...

 in 1960 and in 1961 was awarded an ABC Television traineeship, which took him to Northampton for a year as assistant producer. He also directed Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...

's In the Jungle of Cities

In The Jungle of Cities

In The Jungle of Cities is a play by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. Written between 1921 and 1924, it received its first theatrical production under the title In the Jungle at the Residenztheater in Munich, opening on 9 May 1923. This production was directed by Erich Engel, with...

 and Robin Maugham

Robin Maugham

Robert Cecil Romer Maugham, 2nd Viscount Maugham , known as Robin Maugham, was a British novelist, playwright and travel writer.-Early life:...

's The Servant. Hayman has directed at Theatre Royal Stratford East

Theatre Royal Stratford East

The Theatre Royal Stratford East is a theatre in Stratford in the London Borough of Newham. Since 1953, it has been the home of the Theatre Workshop company.-History:...

, Farnham

Farnham

Farnham is a town in Surrey, England, within the Borough of Waverley. The town is situated some 42 miles southwest of London in the extreme west of Surrey, adjacent to the border with Hampshire...

, the Edinburgh Festival

Edinburgh Festival

The Edinburgh Festival is a collective term for many arts and cultural festivals that take place in Edinburgh, Scotland each summer, mostly in August...

, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford, Surrey presents in-house productions which often tour and transfer to London's West End. Other performances include opera, ballet and pantomime. Named after the actress Yvonne Arnaud, the company has two performance venues, a main theatre and the smaller Mill...

, and Guildford

Guildford

Guildford is the county town of Surrey. England, as well as the seat for the borough of Guildford and the administrative headquarters of the South East England region...

, and for Open Space

Open Space Theatre

The Open Space Theatre was created by Charles Marowitz and Thelma Holt in 1968.It began in a basement on Tottenham Court Road in London, then transferred to an art deco post office on the Euston Road in 1976. Thelma attracted a team of volunteer architects and workers to build the theatre...

. His one-man show with Max Adrian

Max Adrian

Max Adrian was a Northern Irish stage, film and television actor and singer. He was a founding member of both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre....

 as George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

 transferred to the West End

West End theatre

West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...

 and went on a world tour.

He has been a regular contributor to the Arts page of The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

 and to the New Review. He broadcasts on arts programmes and has lectured for the University of London

University of London

-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

 Department of English Literature. In the 1970s he lectured on Shakespeare and the traditions of English acting for the Tufts University

Tufts University

Tufts University is a private research university located in Medford/Somerville, near Boston, Massachusetts. It is organized into ten schools, including two undergraduate programs and eight graduate divisions, on four campuses in Massachusetts and on the eastern border of France...

 of London program.

His 1995 play Playing the Wife is based on August Strindberg

August Strindberg

Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...

's second marriage to the Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n Frida Uhl

Frida Uhl

Frida Uhl was an Austrian writer and translator, who was closely associated to many important figures in 20th-century literature. She was married to August Strindberg. She was the daughter of the well-known Friedrich Uhl, editor of the Wiener Zeitung, and Maria Uhl, a devout Catholic...

.

Works

• John Arden (1968)
• John Osborne (1968)
• Techniques of Acting (1969)
• Robert Bolt (1969)
• Arnold Wesker (1970)
• Harold Pinter (1970)
• Samuel Beckett (1970)
• John Whiting (1970)
• Tolstoy (1970)
• John Gielgud (1971)
• Edward Albee (1971)
• Arguing with Walt Whitman: An Essay on His Influence on Twentieth-Century American Verse (1971)
• Arthur Miller (1972)
• Playback (1973)
• The Set-up: An Anatomy of the English Theatre Today (1973)
• Playback II (1973)
• The First Thrust: the Chichester Festival Theatre (1975)
• Leavis (1976)
• Eugène Ionesco (1976)
• The Novel Today, 1967-1975 (1976)
• Tom Stoppard (1977)
• How to Read a Play (1977)
• Artaud and After (1977)
• De Sade: A Critical Biography (1978)
• British Theatre since 1955: A Reassessment (1979)
• Theatre and Anti-Theatre: New Movements Since Beckett (1979)
• Nietzsche: A Critical Life (1980)
• Franz Kafka (1982)
• Brecht (1983)
• Bertolt Brecht: The Plays (1984)
• Fassbinder: Film Maker (1984)
• Gunter Grass (1985)
• Secrets: Boyhood in a Jewish Hotel, 1932-1954 (1985)
• Writing Against: A Biography Of Sartre (1986)
• My Cambridge (1986) editor
• Proust – A Biography (1990)
• The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath (1992)
• Tennessee Williams: Everyone Else is an Audience (1993)
• Thomas Mann (1995)
• Nietzsche (1997)
• Hitler and Geli (1998)
• A Life of Jung (2001)
• Marquis De Sade: The Genius of Passion (2003)