Richard Wilson

Richard Wilson is the Sir Peter Hall Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Kingston University.

Letter

Great Scott

3 May 2017

In his response to my discussion of the suspicious burning and rebuilding of Stratford’s Memorial Theatre, Gavin Stamp intriguingly cites ‘contemporary gossip’ at the time of the design competition in 1928 (Letters, 1 June). One would like to know more about these rumours, which Stamp links to a misogynistic architectural establishment that refused to believe the 29-year-old Elizabeth Scott was...

Bonfire in Merrie England: Shakespeare’s Burning

Richard Wilson, 4 May 2017

On Saturday​, 6 March 1926, the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon was closed. But around 11 a.m. a girl called Eileen White noticed ‘an awful lot of smoke’ pouring from the back of the building. When she told her aunt she was reassured that it was only ‘Mr Gisbourne’s bonfire’. An hour later, the theatre manageress, Alice Rainbow, was finally...

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