The Magic Theatre

1976: just as the Sex Pistols are about to release ‘Anarchy in the U.K.’, James Harpur arrives at Trinity College, Cambridge, to read Classics. As if stepping onstage in the strangest of theatres, he finds himself acting in a play without knowing what his part is to be.

Changing to study English, the poet finds an education in unlikely places: a broken love affair; excruciating meetings with professors (and his father); initiations into Brahms and Rubens; writing a play about computer dating; and gatecrashing May Balls. Compelling, humorous and poignant, The Magic Theatre is an enthralling rite of passage amid the ‘full catastrophe’ of university life.

‘The Magic Theatre is at once an entertainment and a mystical progress, sharp-edged, brilliant, and original. The snakes of Harpur’s Cambridge slither powerfully and fast’—from the forward by PENELOPE BUCKLEY

‘Succeeding Harpur’s award-winning portrayal of boarding school in The Examined Life, these are poems of rare subtlety, of heartbreaking poignancy and laugh-out-loud humour, of pitch-perfect craft and the most marvellous music’— MARK ROPER

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