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Professor Peter Thomson

Emeritus Professor of Drama

Emeritus Professor of Drama

Having qualified as a Russian interpreter during his national service, Peter Thomson read English at Jesus College, Cambridge (1958-61), was a Canada Council scholar at the University of Toronto (1961-2), a lecturer in Drama at the University of Manchester (1964-71) and at University College, Swansea (1971-4), and has been Professor of Drama at Exeter since 1974. Having recently retired, he's staying on with us as Emeritus Professor of Drama.
His publications include Shakespeare's Theatre, Shakespeare's Professional Career, Brecht (with Jan Needle) and the only book in English devoted entirely to Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children. With Glendyr Sacks, he edited The Cambridge Companion to Brecht, and with Kenneth Richards volumes on Nineteenth-Century British Theatre and The Eighteenth-Century English Stage.
Information about his other life as a cricketer (he was offered a trial by Warwickshire County Cricket Club in 1956) can be obtained in two books published by the Exeter University Press, The Erratics: Fifty Not Out and The Glory Decade. He is an Associate Editor of the forthcoming New Dictionary of National Biography and General Editor of the three-volume Cambridge History of British Theatre.

Research interests

Principal Research Interests: Shakespeare and the early modern theatre, 18th-century British theatre, 19th-century British theatre, British theatre and the visual arts, actors and their social/cultural context, Brecht and his influence, sport (esp. cricket) and theatre.

Research through Practice: anything to do with making plays (new, new out of old, suiting plays to places).

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