A Generous and Pervasive Presence

Extract

Clive somehow was always there. One of the first plays I ever saw in London, in my first year at UCL—from the vertiginous upper circle at the Royal Court, on Friday 13 January 1961, a tattered diary tells me,—was his production of Shelagh Delaney's The Lion in Love. Then, just a month or so later, he directed a revival of Brendan Behan's The Hostage, which I saw twice, the second time having persuaded a couple of friends who had stayed on in the sixth form that this was the best way of rounding off their day in town. We sang ‘The bells of hell go ting-aling-a-ling’ on the tube afterwards with the same gusto as on a previous visit we had giggled over our variations on Alan Bennett's sermon from Beyond the Fringe.