Every time I pick up this collection, I find myself sitting and reading for hours. Something about Stoppard's command of the language, his own personal calling card, is undeniably riveting.

And though there are times (especially in Day & Night) where it seems that characters are too clever for their own good, his sense of timing and his love for delivering a smart, believable group of people amazes me.

This collection is wonderful in its scope, including everything from the frequently produced "Hapgood" to the more recent treasure "Indian Ink." It's a must-have.

This is a great collection of Tom Stoppard plays, and includes some of his best works.

Arcadia is one of Stoppard's greatest plays - a bizarre combination of physics, mathematics, poetry, a good old-fashioned academic stoush and romance (or lust) to boot. A fantastic play to see, but very good to read also.

The Real Thing, Hapgood and Indian Ink are also among Stoppard's more mature and better plays, and nicely round out this collection. These are some of Stoppard's better known plays (and you can read reviews of them on their own pages) but I'll just summarise by saying that I think they are fantastic.

Night and Day is an earlier Stoppard play and maybe not quite as good - it is concerned with journalism in war-torn Africa and does take a deep look at issues faced by a journalist in that situation. However, in comparison to the other plays in this volume, it just doesn't seem quite as good - however it is still a fine play in its own right and does make for interesting reading nonetheless.

Overall, I definitely reccomend this volume, particularly since it's cheaper than buying each of the plays individually.

After seeing Stoppard's "The Real Thing" in London, I was blown away. I purchased this collection to have "The Real Thing," and was blown away but all 5 of Stoppard's masterpieces. He writes convincingly of love, redemption and what it means to exist and to live. I cannot recommend this collection (or anything by Stoppard) enough.

This relatively early play displays all the gifts that made Stoppard famous. It is very funny, with truly witty dialogue and a extremely clever plot. The play is full of clever literary allusions. It is simultaneously a send up of British murder mysteries, Beckett, Pinter, and an attack on Drama critics. As with almost all of Stoppard's work, the humor and wit is used to deal with a serious subject with some philosophical dimensions, in this case the nature of reality and the relationship between real life and art. This is a farce with some serious dimensions. Stoppard is able to examine these themes without sacrificing in any way the humor of the piece, which can be enjoyed simply on the basis of the very funny dialogue and action. This play is not as rich as later works, such as Arcadia or The Invention of Love, in which the humor and philosophical interests are balanced with greater character development and humanity. Very enjoyable.

In 'The Real Inspector Hound', neither the lampooning of the country-house murder-mystery warhorse, nor the digs at shallow and venal theatre critics, nor the use of Ionesco's dramatic anti-logic to warp the structure and language of the play, is particularly original or ambitious. Two critics with their own personal and professional axes to grind sit in an auditorium mirroring 'us' while watching and commenting on a wretchedly cliched 'Mousetrap' rip-off; their desires and fears loop the play and they find themselves the main players. What makes the play an eternal delight is the way Stoppard grounds the European ideas in a very English sensibility; the Wildean sparkle of the hackneyed dialogue; and the uproarious wit with which he turns straw targets into philosophical vortices. More importantly, the spatial interplay between two temporally distinct narratives of 'reality' looks forward to the playwright's masterpiece 'Arcadia'.

'After Magritte' is a companion piece to 'Hound' - it too parodies crime stories, and it too features a detached critic (in this case a policeman, Inspector Foot, investigating a robbery) entering the world of the play (the crime). The most visual of plays, its effects depending on elaborate Magritte-inspired tableaux, the piece is less enjoyable than 'Hound' to read, the involved stage directions halting the wit. Conversely, it's the play in the volume one is most eager to see performed. Stoppard puns on Magritte and Maigret: the domestic surrealism of the former and the burrowing detective logic of the latter seep into each other - the one is gridded by a logic that manages to interpret and connect the most disparate of enigmatic details; the latter is undermined by the same logic being mad and arbitary. The very first image reveals a distorted family composition being spied on by a policeman, a perfect image of disruptive desire trammelled by the Law, or dream by reality; an opposition Stoppard reverses and breaks down with some joyously bad puns.

'Dirty Linen' is comparatively straightforward, mixing mild political satire with bawdy farce. A Select Committee of MPs convenes in the tower of Big Ben to investigate press allegations of widespread sexual immorality in the House of Commons, apparently centring on one particular young 'mystery woman'. Coincidentally, the new clerk at the meeting, a ruthlessly ambitious young woman who goes through increasing states of undress during the play, seems to know her new employers rather well. In making comedy out of government bureaucracy, 'Linen' anticipates the famous TV series 'Yes Minister', but is at its funniest when content with surprisingly traditional farce, which survives Stoppard's reversals - dirty old men, busty, scantily-clad young ladies, doubles entendres, puns, breakdowns and manipulations of language, exits, entrances, deceit and misunderstanding.

'New-found-land' is a play-within-'Dirty Linen', and is set in the same House of Commons committee room, now requistioned by two civil servants, one very old, the other his protege. Both are ostensibly there to advise the Home Secretary on an application by an American for British citizenship (the plays were written for Stoppard's friend and collaborator Ed Berman, to celebrate his naturalisation), but soon diverts into two marvellous monologues - the elder Bernard remembering the day he won a bet with Lloyd-George; Arthur declaims a teeming, train travelogue of the United States.

'Dogg's Hamlet' plays like 'Just William' rewritten by Samuel Beckett with Anthony Burgess. A group of schoolboys, their headmaster Dogg, and a workman called Easy, prepare the stage for the school prizegiving and a production of 'Hamlet'. At this school, although they speak English, words have different meanings - e.g. 'Brick' means 'here', 'slab' becomes 'okay'. Easy, who speaks 'our' English, is baffled and increasingly angered - when a phrase like 'Have you got the time please, sir?' translates into Dogg 'Cretinous pig-faced, git?' you can see the comic possibilities (apparently Stoppard was inspired by a propositon of Wittgenstein's, and his play deals with serious issues such as the collective use of language, but 'Dogg's Hamlet' is much funnier than that old grump ever was). The performance of 'Hamlet' itself - a four-hour play cut to an economical 15 minutes, with an even shorter encore, and comprised mostly of its famous, now cliched tags - is inspired.

'Cahoot's Macbeth' performs the same trick with the Scottish play. It is dedicated to the Czech playwright and novelist Pavel Kahout, one of the signatories of Charta 77, banned by the Czech authorities from any cultural activities, and who held clandestine, abbreviated performances of Shakespeare with fellow blacklisted actors in friends' living room. It is in one such living room that 'Cahoot's Macbeth' is set, the performance being interrupted by a sarcastic police Inspector. Easy makes a reappearance, and the play disintegrates into Dogg, baffling the policeman, and, bringing this collection full-circle, erasing the line betwen stqge and audience. Though a political play, Stoppard mostly avoids didacticism, substituting platitudes with an astonishing, exhilerating verbal collapse, with Shakespeare both subverted and vindicated, the vibrancy and pliability of language affirmed against the deadly 'normalisation' of totalitarian regimes. At one point, the Inspector warns 'Words can be your friend or your enemy, depending on who's throwing the book, so watch your language', a proposition Stoppard dances with great gusto across this fabulous collection.

Tom Stoppard loves multilayered writing and drama, creating comedy or even farce.

This play is an allusion to An Inspector Calls. It uses travesties, double or triple identities like Shakespeare in his comedies. It is a direct descendant of Samuel Beckett's absurd drama. It is an allusion to Murder by Death. It is thus a parody of many models and even a parody of a parody.

But it is also built with a mirror projecting the audience onto the stage, then projecting this projected audience into the play, and the actors into this projected audience of critics. This is again a multifaceted mirror.

Finally no one is true, no one is false, no truth is true, and no truth is false. All theories are purely abstract, absurd and abscond fantasies. The last layer of parody and criticism is directed at the police of course as for the plot of the play, and the critics as for the performance of the play and the play itself.

Stoppard is a hard hitting satirist cast loose onto the public, the critics and society. Catch out of it what you can. And nothing if you can't catch anything. Too bad for you. Stoppard will not cry.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

I like Tom Stoppard's work a lot, so I was curious to find out a little more about the man. I stumbled across this book, and picked it up on a lark. I recommend it to anyone curious about how the great playwright views his work.

I was particularly interested in hearing Stoppard's views on the role culture (and more specifically theatre) plays in shaping the world around us. Stoppard's background in and views about journalism lends an interesting perspective to some of the plays he's written (in particular I'm thinking of Night and Day).

I was surprised to find out how witty Stoppard is in his day to day life. This is most apparent when other people stop in to chat during the interviews. The banter between Stoppard and his acquaintances is very funny. I am also surprised at Stoppard's ego. He's been highly succesful, and is very good at what he does... unfortunately he is highly aware of this, and makes no bones about it (although he pays heavy tribute to Pinter and Beckett among others).

All in all a good read. His conversations with Gussow (and this is a testament to Gussow's ability as an interviewer) provide substantial insight into his motivation and attitudes. Rereading Stoppard after reading this book put much of his work in a new light for me. It makes me want to read conversations with Pinter.

Tom Stoppard is one of, if not the, most important living playwrights. His writings have covered a large range of subjects such as love, imperialism, chaos theory, horticulture, philosophy, theology, and literature among many, many others.

In this collection of interviews between Gussow and Stoppard, the reader is let into Stoppard's mind, and the playwright relates how he chooses subjects, his approach to writing, what art means to him, some of his philosophies on life, among much else. Stoppard is witty and pithy, and Gussow is a wonderful interviewer.

This book is a must for any Stoppard lovers, as it gives one complete access to his thoughts, and is highly recommended for anyone interested in the theatre or playwrighting.

In reading CONVERSATIONS WITH STOPPARD, I came accross an interview in which Stoppard said that he was more satisfied with his novel, LORD MALQUIST AND MR. MOON, than with any of his plays. Now, I am a Stoppard fanatic and have read most of his plays, and I have no idea what posessed him to make such a statement. LORD MALQUIST AND MR. MOON is a very good book, and I would be impressed were it from almost any other author. For the author of gems like ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD, ROUGH CROSSING, and JUMPERS, however, this novel is a bit disappointing. The style is unmistakably Stoppard (don't get me wrong -- this is a must read for any Stoppard devotee), but the plot is a bit muddled, and it is hard to identify with the characters (whereas everyone can identify with the lack of control felt over his own life by Rosencrantz). Overall, a good novel, but not vintage Stoppard

I have to disagree with the other reviewer. I think this book fully measures up to his plays. While reading the novel, I had the sense almost of watching a film. The book is fast-paced, exhilirating, and very funny. The humour is vintage Stoppard, and it reads much like some of the long monologues in Jumpers and Travesties. I think the characters are incredible fascinating and found it very easy to connect w/ Mr. Moon. Overall, a wonderful book and a joyous read. Highly recommended!

Tom Stoppard here tries to create a totally magrittian world.

As for the visual part, it is easy since Magritte was a painter. Chaotic, illogical, absurd visual elements and characters. Some elements are moved to create new absurd tableaux, even when they are apparently the results of logical movements.

It is trickier to do the same with the dialogue of the play. He uses confusing words. He uses absurd language about an absent character that is described and interpreted in all kinds of ways by the various characters at various moments.

But what about the plot ? Stoppard throws two cops into the tableau and they are so logical that they are entangled into absurd logical lines and come to absurd conclusions. The world becomes both kafkaian and orwellian, though it remains a comedy, or even a farce.

Brilliantly done. Some details in the text are only visual, and would be hard to vocalize, for example the pun, on « lute- loot ».

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Real Inspector Hound- What a wonderfull piece of work by stoppard. Weird, yet very interesting and funny. Full of humour and twists and turns. A very original idea and created many laughs. I fully recommend picking up this play and giving it a shot. Stoppard, you've done it again.

After Magritte- Hilarious. Interesting. Wow. This play tends to verge on odd but it is very good. I enjoyed reading this. There is never a dull moment, and is always full of laughs (if you can understand what is going on). I also recommend this play. Stoppard, I love you!

I like this play because it blends the aesthetic with the dramatic. It's aesthetic because it discusses the great works of literature with the great writers and critics of that time. It's dramatic because this discussion provides an interesting background to an issue that makes difficult the lives of the main characters A.E. Houseman and Oscar Wilde: homosexual love. For Houseman the problem is unrequited love. For Oscar Wilde it is a charge of sodomy.

The point of classical scholarship is to study Greek and Latin works-that is the vocation of the scholars in this play. According to Oscar Wilde, to be an "aesthete" means to believe that all beauty emanates from Greek writing and sculpture particularly sculpture of the nude male form. In the play A.E. Houseman and his scholarly contemporaries-Ruskin and Pater--point out that much Latin and Greek poetry was written by one man who was in love with another. What makes the play ironic is how this aspect of these ancient cultures flies in the face of contemporary Victorian mores. To wit: the characters in the play are homosexual and that was a crime in 19th century England.

Every work of art must have a point or it's pointless. The point in this play is how the definition of love has come full circle since ancient Greece: what was once socially acceptable, boy love (i.e. pedophilia), is now anathema. And what is at best today grudgingly tolerated, homosexual love, was common practice in ancient Greece at least among the dramatists, poets, and philosophers. Stoppard writes: "Before Plato could describe love, the loved one had to be invented." Hence the title: "Invention of Love".

When Houseman died he had been successful in his career but not in his desire for eros: He says "the grave's a fine and private place but none I think there do embrace".

At first glance, Tom Stoppard's newest work, THE INVENTION OF LOVE, exists as a scholarly presentation of A.E. Housman and the poetry which motivated the bulk of his life. However, Tom Stoppard does not blithely present Housman's life in lecture form. Instead, readers and audiences take a powerful journey beyond the life of Housman's poetry. In it, Stoppard shows us the (im)possibilities of love and friendship, and the indelible events which motivate our later lives. While Stoppard is well known for more intellectual drama, his ability to create heart-breaking moments of theater should not be underestimated. By the end of THE INVENTION OF LOVE, we understand why Housman's choice to hide behind his art is so tragic--and, ultimately, so human. Those who loved ARCADIA should not be without Stoppard at his most personal. Don't let Stoppard fool you: as audiences are aware from the current Broadway revival of THE REAL THING, Tom Stoppard does have a heart, and it one of the most powerful in contemporary theater.

Time is relative in Tom Stoppard's "The Invention of Love." One the one hand, it's a dazzling three-hour journey of many characters and ideas through the years (1859-1936) of A. E. Housman's life; on the other, it's a split second between the moment of the poet's realization of his death on the banks of the river Styx -- "I'm dead, then. Good." -- and his true, cathartic acceptance of it: "How lucky to find myself standing on this empty shore, with the indifferent waters at my feet.

Both a large-scale symphony and delicate chamber music, "Invention" requires thorough understanding of Greek and Latin poetry, the intricacies of the 19th Century academic, social and literary scene, even of the Labouchere amendment to the Criminal Law Act that landed Oscar Wilde in jail - and it allows being dazzled and moved without knowing anything about all that. The play works both on the level of seeing "characters in a play" or appr! eciating (as I couldn't possibly without another lifetime of learning) the full significance of the presence of Walter Pater, John Ruskin, Frank Harris, Jerome K. Jerome... of three generations of famed scholars at Oxford and Cambridge.

Here is the "late Stoppard," the Stoppard of "Arcadia" in his full glory of intellectual brilliance and rich emotional simplicity. Here is a play requiring, demanding, allowing re-reading and re-viewing, a work that keeps growing within the reader, the viewer, culminating in hoped-for (and, in my case, yet unattained) appreciation and understanding, even as old man Housman experiences in breathtaking scenes of conversations by the Styx with his younger self.

In the tiny black rectangle of the Cottlesloe, under Richard Eyre's farewell direction after a decade at the head of the National, "Invention" worked brilliantly, presented by a surprisingly large and uniformly excellent cast, headed by John Wo! od's old Housman and PaulRhys' young one. From Housman's et! ymological exasperation with all the talk about the Wilde controversy ("Homosexuality? What barbarity! It's half Greek and half Latin!") to mindboggling discussions about the role of a comma, to a mini-essay about who "invented" the love elegy (Catullus or Gallus, based on the single surviving line from the work of the latter), the play may be seen as one in the long line of the Clever Stoppard -- "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern," "Jumpers," "The Real Thing" and "Hapgood" - but it is also assuredly in the category of the Great Stoppard of today.

Still, with all the rich complexity and wonderful timewarps that have characterized both plays, may "Invention" by called another "Arcadia"? I don't think so, but the very question may be moot. Both similar and different, the two plays form the foundation of the triumphal arch for a playwright who has progressed on a dislocated time-scale from the fire! works of Wilde to the steady, bright, warm light still shining across two millenia from the poets of Housman's scholarship and passion.

Tom Stoppard here tries to create a totally magrittian world.

As for the visual part, it is easy since Magritte was a painter. Chaotic, illogical, absurd visual elements and characters. Some elements are moved to create new absurd tableaux, even when they are apparently the results of logical movements.

It is trickier to do the same with the dialogue of the play. He uses confusing words. He uses absurd language about an absent character that is described and interpreted in all kinds of ways by the various characters at various moments.

But what about the plot ? Stoppard throws two cops into the tableau and they are so logical that they are entangled into absurd logical lines and come to absurd conclusions. The world becomes both kafkaian and orwellian, though it remains a comedy, or even a farce.

Brilliantly done. Some details in the text are only visual, and would be hard to vocalize, for example the pun, on « lute- loot ».

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

This absurd play is both funny and tragic at the same time. Professor Leopold Nettles is about to be arrested for an article he wrote, and no one connected with him seems to be overly concerned. Instead, everyone he knows, and some absolute strangers, keep busy trying to make him into what they want. At one point he is given the opportunity to deny that he was the author of the article, which leads to some fascinating thoughts on the questions of identity, self-worth, and integrity. The play causes the reader to reflect on his or her beliefs about these things; it also serves as good insight into life under a communist regime.

Let's face it; if you're looking at Volume Two of a collection, you're already a fan. This is a collection of short radio plays, mainly from early in Stoppard's career. Some are minor classics (Dominic Boot, Albert's Bridge) and others are forgettable. However, all of them show the true Stoppard spark, wit and intellect. Don't expect work of the same quality as the major plays, and you'll be happy.

I've given this book only four stars because it wasn't long enough! I would have liked to read more about her childhood from her point of view. Nancy's stories about it were from another vantage since she was 16 when Deborah was born.

I wasn't bored by this book at all. Have been reading about the Mitfords this summer and fall and am interested in their way of life which is so different than mine.

I don't mind the footnotes telling who people are. Some I knew, others I had never heard of. I didn't think the use of footnotes was excessive, but then I read a lot of books that have footnotes so am not concerned about them.

The Duchess has been very successful with managing Chatsworth House and I admire her for that. Her wit and wisdom come through as she writes matter-of-factly about her life. She doesn't sound stuffy at all. I wish I could visit Chatsworth and meet her.

This book is homey and comforting. I loved her piece on being
discovered talking to yourself! There is so much that is so wise,
human and to the point. Maybe the negative reviewers are too young to appreciate the subtle joy of this book. It certainly is one volume that I will reread from time to time and keep for the guest room. Anyone who is old enough to remember civility in daily life, service in shops and neither voice mail nor cell phones impinging on your daily life will really enjoy this COUNTING MY CHICKENS.

I enjoyed this book immensely. Addressing some of the negative reviews that have appeared below, I feel that the Duchess of Devonshire would be the first to say that she doesn't expect to be placed in the pantheon of Mitford writers with Nancy and Decca. So much of Nancy's charm is period charm after all, and Decca appeals to readers because she is fearless, outspoken and a rebel.

"Counting My Chickens" is great fun to read, and just because one was personally unacquainted with Harold Macmillan or any of the other people thoughtfully mentioned in footnotes is little reason to judge the book itself as 'insipid' and 'boring', adjectives that could so well describe life in a world dominated by the delights of Macdonalds and Coca Cola, and restricted by the application of just four adjectives - cool, great, nice and neat - to every possible situation.

I, like another reviewer, delighted in the Duchess' use of mitfordesque descriptions of the mundane - 'a septic handbag'.