This week’s guest is a man of many talents. James Shapiro is the Larry Miller Professor of English at Columbia university, he is the Shakespeare Scholar in Residence at the Public Theater in New York and he is the author of the mighty 1599, Baillie Gifford Award Winner for the best non-fiction book of the last 25 years. Jim has spent his life making Shakespeare come alive- on the page, in the rehearsal room and the lecture hall and no one does it better. This is a conversation that takes in: judging the Booker Prize; Hamilton’s 50 foot wave; working on the scary and tempestuous production of a Trump-imitating Julius Caesar; being Shakespeare’s agent and the director’s waiter; what stops you feeling the great plays as you once did and the erosion of democracy and its inextricable link to theatre.

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