The Plays: The Doctor of Honour

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(Calderón; Crawford Arts Centre, St. Andrews)

This was the subject of my PhD thesis at St. Andrews. I worked on it for 3 years, abandoned it, becasme a bus conductor and a nurse and then, eventually, returned to it. I had the strongest and strangest feeling that I had to finish the thesis before I could become a writer.
To try to get me back into the thesis, I decided to translate the play.
My wife Susie showed it to a colleague at the BBC, Robert Livingston (who now runs Hi-Arts) and he told me “You can write dialogue”.
I hadn’t known before...