The Latest Breaking News from Peter Brook

Actor who toured with Laurence Olivier and Peter Brook, starred on Broadway and had a long career in film and TV

Literary editor and chief book reviewer of the Times who later joined the Observer as its theatre critic

Experimental British theatre director whose confrontational style often featured loud rock music, nudity, blasphemy and free dance

The Paris-based British playwright, back in the UK with The Confessions, inspired by conversations with his mother, talks about the secrets she revealed

Paul Scofield, Ian McKellen and Glenda Jackson have all redefined Shakespeare’s unpredictable ruler – a role in which actors usually succeed

Peter Rankin writes: You might say that Peter Brook is another name that could be added to Jane Birkin’s long list of eminent directors

Two people who watched the actor and Labour politician closely remember the desire to get to the truth that made her so powerful on stage, screen and in parliament

There was never anything shrinking about the confidence Glenda Jackson projected on stage and screen in her heyday. Afflicted with an uncommon common sense, her characters were defined by their sharp intelligence, independence and, yes, irritability. They were nobody’s fool, even when they wound up with the short end of…

Actor who was a fearless, ferocious presence in theatre, cinema and television, then turned to politics as a Labour MP