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Originally published in 1970, this account of Tolstoy's achievement as a novelist concentrates on the best known of his works, in particular the two masterpieces Anna Karenina and War and Peace. Extracts are, however, taken from all the major novels and are arranged chronologically to demonstrate the development of his technique. The main part of the book is concerned with narrative method and analyses Tolstoy's treatment of character, landscape and dialogue together with his use of satire and irony. The range of subject matter throughout the novels is then discussed. In this way, Tolstoy's genius is seen to lie in his unique gift for penetrating deeply into the individual lives of his characters and at the same time embracing their actions within a complete framework of social and political life.

Originally published in 1973, this book investigates the power and the pressures behind English theatre in the late 20th Century, analysing its structure and systems, and the way that money and motives flow through it. On the one hand there are the organisations: the big national companies, the West End managements, the regional repertory theatres, the ‘fringe'groups, the trade unions, the Arts Council. On the other are the individuals: actors, directors, playwrights, agents, administrators. Ronald Hayman's challenging book illuminates the conflicts and contradictions in the set-up. It is a mine of information about how theatres are run, how shows pay their way, and what happens when they don't.

Originally published in 1969, this was the first book of its kind: an attempt to describe the different approaches that the actor needs to make to different media – theatre, film and television – and to show how the art of acting, which never stops evolving had entered into a new phase of growth in the sixties. Ronald Hayman examines questions which are basic, but had often been ignored: What exactly goes on inside the actor's mind while (s)he is preparing a part? How much do actors vary in their approach? Where does personality stop and technique begin? This wide-ranging study of the actor at work is based partly on what outstanding actors have said about their methods but chiefly on close analysis of actual performances in plays, films and on television. Laurence Olivier, Helene Weigel, Jeanne Moreau and many others are both examined in close-up and viewed in perspective against the giants of the past like Bernhardt and Salvini.

Günter Grass is one of the writers who grew up in a Germany already in the grip of Nazism. None of them has found better ways than his of translating the sordid history of the movement into fiction; none has looked more critically at the ‘denazification'and reconstruction of Germany. In this important study, originally published in 1985, Ronald Hayman scrutinizes Grass's development and assesses his achievement. He finds that Grass's more recent work does not fulfil the promise of the The Tin Drum and his other early novels. While this study focuses mainly on the fiction, it also takes into account the poetry, plays, political writing, criticism and graphic work. Grass is important not only as an exemplar of the guilt-laden German conscience but as one of the most ambitious and accomplished living fabulists.

Nietzsche (1844 - 1900) proclamou:'Deus está morto'. Neste ensaio, Hayman mostra a atualidade deste pensador em suas várias e contraditórias vozes – uma sensibilidade falando persuasivamente sobre o paradoxo como única verdade; a pluralidade como única consistência; a fragmentação como única integridade. E revela um novo Nietzsche para uma era nova, pós-moderna.