James Graham State of the Nation Playwright

“After two decades dissecting England’s social structure, concentrating its essence and delivering it back to its people on stage and screen, James Graham gets the same treatment in this detailed and perceptive analysis of his place in our country’s tottering cultural and political ecosystems. Philpott excavates how he pierces the carapace of an opaque and fast-moving polity, yet speaks with easy wit and profound wisdom to commercial audiences who barely know of Graham himself, never mind Gramsci.”

—Gary Naylor, Broadway World and The Arts Desk, UK

James Graham is one of the UK’s leading dramatists, a multi-award-winning writer who for almost 20 years has analysed and articulated concepts of power and authority in modern British society. James Graham: State of the Nation Playwright is the first full-length assessment of the writer’s output, applying core thematic areas – Democracy, Anarchy, Famous Faces and Television – to understand how different power bases operate in modern society, their effectiveness and influence, and how they came to pre-eminence during the last 70 years. The book concludes with an evaluation of Graham’s contribution to state-of-the-nation debates, Britain’s cycles of decline and its consequences for understanding contemporary national identity.

Maryam Philpott is a theatre critic with over 10 years’ experience writing for The Reviews Hub and her own site Cultural Capital dedicated to long-form theatre criticism, placing reviews in a broader historical and performance context. With a background in social and cultural history, previous publications include the peer reviewed academic monograph Air and Sea Power in World War One: Combat and Experience in the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Navy, published by Bloomsbury.