The UN Inspector

David Farr is a writer and director. His plays The Danny Crowe Show, Elton John's Glasses, Night of the Soul, Ramayana, The UN Inspector, The Heart of Robin Hood, The Hunt and a collection of adaptations have all been published by Faber. He was Artistic Director of London's Gate Theatre from 1995 to 1998, and Joint Artistic Director of Bristol Old Vic from 2002 to 2005. He has directed Coriolanus and Julius Caesar for the RSC and The UN Inspector for the National Theatre. In June 2005 he became Artistic Director of the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, where his productions included new versions of The Odyssey and Kafka's Metamorphosis. In 2009 he became Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, where his productions of The Winter's Tale, King Lear and The Homecoming opened to critical acclaim. He also writes for television and film, including all six episodes of The Night Manager for the BBC, the hit Amazon show Hanna, and The Midwich Cuckoos, which was released on Sky Max in 2022. He directed the first production of Thomas Adès's Powder Her Face for Almeida Opera in 1995. David's first book for children, The Book of Stolen Dreams, was published in 2021.

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809-52), the greatest Russian novelist and playwright of the early 19th century, wrote the first realist Russian plays. He is celebrated for his novel Dead Souls (1842) and his short stories 'The Overcoat' and 'Diary of a Madman'. His satirical masterpiece Government Inspector (1836; first seen in London in 1920) was so severely attacked that he went into exile in Rome, only returning in 1848. Other plays include Marriage and Gamblers. In later life he became a religious fanatic and starved to death soon after burning the second and third parts of Dead Souls.