The diary of a writer-publisher: 40

1 July 2026
I attend an uncostumed run-through of the RSC Cherry Orchard (previews open in nine days time and the press night is 21st). Met at the stage door of the Swan by the company SM, who makes a point of showing me the bare Swan auditorium. She stresses that the rehearsal space we are going to above it is of exactly the same dimensions as the Swan stage. This is extremely important when a Chekhov play moves to its performance space.

Watching actors of this calibre — Branagh, Hunt, Pullman, and frankly all of them — in a rehearsal run-through at Stratford has to be one of the peaks of my theatrical life. They give it their all. There had been a voice warm up and you can hear their every syllable. If anything, there is too much robust physical action for Chekhov, in my mind, but they certainly use every inch of the space. Their pace and energy are mesmerising. In the interval, the voice coach asks me about a short list of remaining Russian pronunciation glitches. These usually involve stress on the first syllable, which we know is very difficult for English actors speaking their lines ‘trippingly on the tongue’. My view is that one should not be too pedantic about it or it can block their all-important flow.

Michael Elwyn (Firs) and director Tamara Harvey in rehearsal for The Cherry Orchard at Stratford-upon-Avon © Photo by Johan Persson, RSC

I am sitting at a table on Tamara’s right, with RSC Associate Director Elizabeth Freestone on my right, and we all occasionally make notes. I sense that Elizabeth is startled to see me in tears at the end. At Tamara’s request, she stands up and gives a masterful brief appraisal of the ensemble’s achievement, to which I can only add ‘hear, hear’. According to my watch, the four acts took a total of two hours and thirteen minutes, which is excellent for this play, but a few minutes need shaving off the last act.

At 9 pm I meet Tamara in an empty bar of the Arden Hotel, where the natural drink seems to be champagne. I was determined to hear any concerns of hers first. We talk about features of the staging (e.g. cutting out the very last breaking string sound, which I certainly do not miss), after which she goes through all of the secondary characters and asks me my opinion (great definition and depth throughout, e.g. Yepikhodov). Then she very mutedly expresses to me her ‘more concern’. Unfortunately, I already felt the same. To my amazement, Tamara now asks me to go through every one of my own notes on the run-through (e.g. ‘Lopakhin far too drunk’). What thoroughness, what professionalism…

But at 10.20 pm she insists on taking me back into the Swan, which by now has been decorated with the set. W…how! Tamara can see that I am bowled over by it, and with an enormous smile on her face says: ‘You see, white!’ She may have been referring to my information weeks back that cherry blossom in Russia and Ukraine is always white, not pink like sakura (I sent her a close up photograph of cherry blossom in Chekhov’s own garden at Melikhovo). The cherry blossom hangs in small panels above the stage, there are dead black branches on the proscenium surround, and the stage cloth has blurred faces in it, echoing Trofimov’s words ‘all your ancestors were serf-owners, they owned living souls, and don’t you think there are human beings looking at you from every cherry tree in the orchard, don’t you hear their voices?’ Lovely. I’m delighted for Tamara.

2 July
Back in Cambridge and thinking all day about what could…must…be done about Tamara’s ‘more concern’. Eventually, late afternoon, I got a long email off to her. I gave her my considered view, but realised that not only does that involve a massive and very difficult effort of character reshaping by the director, with only a week to opening, but it implies there are some problems with the script, which is Laura Wade’s version of the play and which Tamara told me had to be created rather hastily. As with many things she said yesterday evening, I now wish I had pursued that, but I did not want to pry. (On 9 April I gave the RSC free my own literal of the play.) I have never been shown Wade’s script. The version works admirably, but as I heard and saw it yesterday it has diminished a main character and great diplomatic skill will be needed to fix that before 10th. I am sorry I had to call out the big challenge, but I am supposed to be frank. I fear Tamara will not reply.

10 July
After a bumpy start because of its clots of Sovietspeak, I’m now well into Livshits’s book on the history of official atheism in twentieth century Russia. I’m struck by the similarity between his technique and that of Bakhtin’s in the long (a sixth of the book) introduction to his famous Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Both scrupulously present all the views of other people on their subject. The result is a polyphony that stimulates the reader to intuit the author’s own position and formulate one of his/her own. Although Livshits’s identity is projected as that of a Soviet ‘scientific atheist’, and Bakhtin’s books were always historically contextualised in Marxist jargon, I can’t help feeling that, writing in conditions of repression, both of them simply practised ‘mimicry’. This is well attested in Bakhtin’s case, as he is on record as saying in the 1970s that he had ‘never been a Marxist in any way’. Perhaps in truth Livishits had ‘never been a scientific atheist in any way’!

13 July
Today Jim uploaded to Amazon the second, finalised version of my book of twenty short stories. We sincerely hope this is accepted and we get a proof back within a fortnight. Jim, aka Goat2 now, has taken infinite pains over the design of the back cover, which I am very pleased with indeed and for which I thank him from the bottom of my heart:

Goat2 comment: ‘This is subject to change slightly (page size and barcode proportions), but it’s essentially finished!’

I hope Calderonians find these images pleasantly intriguing, and that the book will be out in time for your late holiday reading…

22 July
Very mixed reviews today for the RSC Cherry Orchard. The accompanying photos suggest that the completed set is much more fussy than I saw. Where performance is concerned, clearly Tamara did not succeed in rectifying her and my ‘more concern’ about one of the key roles (see 1-2 July above). I am sure she tried, but the resistance was impenetrable. Vital lesson: don’t import stars, especially if they are imposed upon you by accountants. Finally, I have nothing against ‘versions’ of Chekhov’s plays, but I prefer his own.

SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS

‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement

‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer

‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.