Guardian Live: David Hare, Kings Place

David Hare is one of Britain’s foremost dramatists. A precocious talent, he brought his first play to the Royal Court in 1970, shortly after graduating from Cambridge. Bluntly titled Slag, it drew inspiration from Aristophanes’ classical comedy Lysistrata, and marked out Hare as an exciting young playwright.

He made good on this promise some eight years later with Plenty: a career high-point, it followed the travails of a chronically dissatisfied former secret agent, turning a critical eye to the supposed promise of Britain’s post-war era. As with much of Hare’s work, the play was noted for the acuity of its social engagement.

His is a decidedly political theatre, even as it focuses on individual lives, and later plays have touched on heated subjects from the politics of spin to privatisation. In the ‘00s, he also turned his attention to the Iraq War and the events preceding it, most memorably in Stuff Happens, but also in the Vertical Hour.

This year, the venerable dramatist published his memoir Blue Touch Paper, an account of his journey from Sussex schoolboy to national institution. On November 24, Hare looks back on this extraordinary career, speaking at Kings Place as part of the Guardian Live series.